Advantages of MPLS in the enterprise

shodown · June 2010

I'm looking for some answers. I have read a few white papers from cisco and juniper, but I"m still lost. Currently we have point to point links all over the US and a few POP's to the internet. We have a mess of IBGP/EBGP and OSPF all over the network. What advantages can we gain by using MPLS.

I"m looking to:

reduce the amount of IBGP configs that we use.
Simply the network
Gain performace as we are about to move to VOIP over the WAN (EDIT)

Things are working now, but is there a gain by going to MPLS.

Thanks

ColbyG · June 2010

Where are you running BGP?

shodown · June 2010

we run it on all the large sites that have multiple connections to POP's and Dual homed sites we run IBGP in those.

ccie1yr · June 2010

shodown wrote: »

I'm looking for some answers. I have read a few white papers from cisco and juniper, but I"m still lost. Currently we have point to point links all over the US and a few POP's to the internet. We have a mess of IBGP/EBGP and OSPF all over the network. What advantages can we gain by using MPLS.

I"m looking to:

reduce the amount of IBGP configs that we use.
Simply the network
Gain performace as we are about to move to VOIP over the lan

Things are working now, but is there a gain by going to MPLS.

Thanks

Will you be joining some Telco MPLS cloud or will you be building your own. If it's your own than, it has to full mesh with OSPF protocol, because Full mesh provides multiple paths for redundancy and OSPF is very good with MPLS TE (Traffic Engineering - technique which help you to apply QoS and FEC).

MPLS might not reduce your configuration headache, coz to differentiate b/w customers network you might have to run RD & RT techniques, but at the same time these functions will provide you flexibility to merge different network and ease of routing between different domains.

MPLS will increase network performance due to label lookup rather than routing lookup, but response time (latency will increase) as P2P link offers the best response time. IBGP peering will be less as now you will only to run EBGP between CE (Client routers - NO MPLS) and PE (Provider routers - MPLS).

MPLS will definitely be a better solution and technology than Point-to-point mesh network.

shodown · June 2010

ccie1yr wrote: »

Will you be joining some Telco MPLS cloud or will you be building your own. If it's your own than, it has to full mesh with OSPF protocol, because Full mesh provides multiple paths for redundancy and OSPF is very good with MPLS TE (Traffic Engineering - technique which help you to apply QoS and FEC).

MPLS might not reduce your configuration headache, coz to differentiate b/w customers network you might have to run RD & RT techniques, but at the same time these functions will provide you flexibility to merge different network and ease of routing between different domains.

MPLS will increase network performance due to label lookup rather than routing lookup, but response time (latency will increase) as P2P link offers the best response time. IBGP peering will be less as now you will only to run EBGP between CE (Client routers - NO MPLS) and PE (Provider routers - MPLS).

MPLS will definitely be a better solution and technology than Point-to-point mesh network.

We will be making our own cloud. My senior engineer said draft something up and we will take a look if I put some effort into it. I'm working on a visio right now, then I will GNS3 it all to see if it make since.

ccie1yr · June 2010

shodown wrote: »

We will be making our own cloud. My senior engineer said draft something up and we will take a look if I put some effort into it. I'm working on a visio right now, then I will GNS3 it all to see if it make since.

Hmm ... good, you gonna have nice learning now.

Only advise I can provide is, keep OSPF inside and try to make is as redundant as you can. Should be easy at least on papers

shodown · June 2010

ccie1yr wrote: »

Hmm ... good, you gonna have nice learning now.

Only advise I can provide is, keep OSPF inside and try to make is as redundant as you can. Should be easy at least on papers

Thanks for your help. I have identified some books that will help me, but my ultimate goal is to sale the senior enigneer that we need to move in this direction. He is open to it, but it has to make since. So I will be learning the In's/outs of the technology. Seeing what we can do with it.

ColbyG · June 2010

shodown wrote: »

We will be making our own cloud. My senior engineer said draft something up and we will take a look if I put some effort into it. I'm working on a visio right now, then I will GNS3 it all to see if it make since.

Post a sanitized diagram, if you could. I've yet to see many instances where MPLS would be beneficial in the enterprise, especially since most enterprise guys don't know much about it.

Maybe I'm not quite seeing what your network really looks like though.

keenon · June 2010

All I can say is definitive mpls design book. If your making your own this is the book to reference.

If your joining the SP mpls network all you have to do is a eBGP session with the provider and advertise your internal IGP routes from that location into the cloud.

Really it comes down to if own or lease the circuits, cost which is the major and benefits. Sounds like a pros and cons sheet for each direction.

WRKNonCCNP · June 2010

Implementing an MPLS VPN network can offer any-to-any connectivity, logical segregation of traffic at layer 3 (based on VRF), and the possibility of a number of QoS configurations to provide voice and video prioritization. However, on a smaller scale, I would agree with ColbyG in that there may not be much benefit to switching to MPLS rather than just using routing protocols, from a performance perspective.

ccie15672 · June 2010

As always, the answer is 'it depends.'

Cisco is moving away from MPLS in the enterprise somewhat, or at least that is the general direction they seem to be moving in. OTV is emerging as an alternative to VPLS, and there are already GRE based L3VPN techniques out there. This somewhat simplifies the deployment of segregated environments in enterprises.

On the other hand if you are a very large enterprise with many lines-of-business that operate somewhat autonomously, and you are acquisition heavy.... then MPLS is the right answer for you. You might end up dozens of L2/L3 VPNs. It might also benefit you to bring customers into the edge of data center into their own L2/L3 VPN... it all depends. I know that is an ambiguous.

marlon23 · June 2010

running MPLS on top your enterprise infrastructure won't help you achieve your goals:

"
reduce the amount of IBGP configs that we use.
Simply the network
Gain performace as we are about to move to VOIP over the WAN
"

Once you deploy MPLS your network will get more complex in operation with LDP, due to MPLS label overhead you'll loose some throughput. Some features might not work with MPLS, such as some kinds of QoS and security. Not speaking about enabling totally new features which can cause network downtime because of configuration/design problems or simple hit of some MPLS-related IOS/JunOS bugs. Problem might also raise that some platforms/IOS feature sets you use dont have MPLS, and you'll need to buy either new equipment or SW licences/upgrades. To achieve your goals, you should review your QoS and Routing (Summarize) design. MPLS alone has no benefit, major benefit can bring MPLS VPN due to its virtualization capabilities, you however don't seem to need those. With proper enterprise OSPF, iBGP & QoS design you'll be fine.

shodown · June 2010

marlon23 wrote: »

running MPLS on top your enterprise infrastructure won't help you achieve your goals:

"
reduce the amount of IBGP configs that we use.
Simply the network
Gain performace as we are about to move to VOIP over the WAN
"

Once you deploy MPLS your network will get more complex in operation with LDP, due to MPLS label overhead you'll loose some throughput. Some features might not work with MPLS, such as some kinds of QoS and security. Not speaking about enabling totally new features which can cause network downtime because of configuration/design problems or simple hit of some MPLS-related IOS/JunOS bugs. Problem might also raise that some platforms/IOS feature sets you use dont have MPLS, and you'll need to buy either new equipment or SW licences/upgrades. To achieve your goals, you should review your QoS and Routing (Summarize) design. MPLS alone has no benefit, major benefit can bring MPLS VPN due to its virtualization capabilities, you however don't seem to need those. With proper enterprise OSPF, iBGP & QoS design you'll be fine.

Thanks. That pretty much the conclusion that we came too. But like every few weeks we seem to have to add a private AS for mulithoming. We are all in a race to have a simpler network design before it grew to become its own beast.

Advantages of MPLS in the enterprise

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