Olives and Frame Relay

stuh84

I wondered, is it possible to work Frame Relay with Olives?

I'm currently using Dynamips to go between Cisco routers and Juniper Olives (under QEMU, with UDP tunnels connecting from Dynamips), and I am under the impression that Frame Relay would be unlikely to work, but I may be wrong.

Anyone had any luck?

zoidberg

Yikes. I don't think that's going to happen. The only thing I think you can operational simulate is ethernet interfaces. On the flip side, you should be able to enter some config for frame relay, sonet, atm, etc. They just won't actually work. But at least you can play with some config.

I'm not an Olive expert, so if there's a way some of the other guys on this forum might have some cool suggestions.

Aldur

Yup, only ethernet interface ability with olives and plus I don't think you can do anything that requires you to use a physical property of an interface, such as an encapsulation.

Although, like zoidberg said you can practice the config by configuring a T1/SE interface and configure FR on it. Somewhat limiting I know, but configuring FR on a Juniper router is pretty basic, encaps and one side needs to be DCE or you can turn off keep-alives to overcome the DCE requirement, and you're good to go.

stuh84

I had a feeling this might be the case. I have seen mentions of using logical routers, and tunnelling between them to do it, as I saw something about putting whatever encapsulation you want on the tunnels, but it kind of defeats the point of trying to work on interoperability with Ciscos, if it can only be done within one router.

I guess I'll just eventually need to get hold of a couple of real Junipers

Aldur

Yea, unfortunately olives to have their limitations

I definitely recommend picking up an old J2300 with the built in T1 ports. Prolly could pick one up on ebay for around 200$.

stuh84

Unfortunately I've not seen any cheaply over on this side of the pond, although saying that, they aren't much more expensive than something like a Cisco 3550 switch....

Just so I'm certain, the T1 interfaces are RJ45 I guess, so I could probably rig up some form of multiple T1/E1 router rigged up as frame relay switch....

I hate spending potential cash

Aldur

Yup, the T1/E1 ports are RJ45. And what you're thinking about turning a J router into FR switch is exactly what I did back in the day.

Keep in mind though that to do this the FR switch/J router will probably need to be it least a J4300 because of it's ability to have removable PIM cards and not just 2 fixed T1/E1 ports.

With the router I use to have that acted as a FR switch was a J4300 with 4 T1/E1 PIMs which equaled out to be 8 T1/E1 ports total.

Although if this is just for certification study then I'd think twice about building a FR switch out of a J4300 router for the reason that setting up a p2p T1 link, encaps FR, and DCE on one side should suffice enough for FR studies in the Juniper world. Besides SP's are more about L3/L2 VPNs and not so much about FR switched backbones anymore, well that's it least true on this side of the pond, not to sure of the story in your side of the world.

stuh84

Yeah FR isn't used over here a great deal either any longer, but it does pop up on occassion. I just want to cover all bases really, plus I kind of have a soft spot for Frame Relay, especially for labbing due to how easy it can be to create complex topologies without any physical work.

It'll be a way off, I still have to finish the CCNP, but I think after the JCNIA or S exams are calling me, probably the M track.

Aldur

Oh yea, I understand whatcha mean by saying that you can make some fun complex topologies with FR. There were some pretty cool things that I had going with the J4300 that I had running as a FR switch.

Good luck with you CCNP studies, we'll be waiting here when you jump into your Juniper studies