Pseudowire? VC?

mzinz

I was introduced to a term today: pseudowire.

My manager explained it as:
A pseudowire is where it will terminate. If you have Switch1 -> Switch2 -> Switch3 - If Switch1 has an LDP Targeted Session terminating on Switch3 that would be called a pseudowire. In essence a pseudowire is a make believe wire that is being connected to Switch1 -> Switch3. Make sense?

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I understand his response--But doesn't that serve the exact same purpose as a VC? Is that just another term for a VC?

mikej412

From http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/pwe3-charter.html

A pseudowire emulates a point-to-point link, and provides a
single service which is perceived by its user as an unshared
link or circuit of the chosen service. It is not intended that
an emulated service will be indistinguishable from the service
that is being emulated. The emulation need only be sufficient
for the satisfactory operation of the service.....

I'd say it sounds like a PVC.... or a tunnel creating a PVC.

I was going to say I'll wait for the RFCs before I buy into the psuedowire concept.... but if you scroll down you'll find a bunch of RFC links.

I'm way behind in reading RFCs..... but I'm pretty sure this won't be on the CCIE Service Provider Lab Exam anytime soon.

What's funny -- your VoIP starts to hit a congested link so you fallback to the old PSTN.... only to have your Telco sneak the PSTN traffic into a pseudowire -- causing the congestion on the IP/MPLS backbone that kicks your voice traffic back onto the PSTN....