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The exact difference between metro ethernet and MPLS?
1) Im not asking their definitions. These two are used together everywhere. How to separate them?
2) Also, MPLS and the MPLS VPN is the other case that makes my mind confused. How are these distinguished?
Once MPLS needs to be established, ME switches along with routers are placed in that location. However, which of them
is doing what task there in such a topology?
2) Also, MPLS and the MPLS VPN is the other case that makes my mind confused. How are these distinguished?
Once MPLS needs to be established, ME switches along with routers are placed in that location. However, which of them
is doing what task there in such a topology?
Monster PC specs(Packard Bell VR46) : Intel Celeron Dual-Core 1.2 GHz CPU , 4096 MB DDR3 RAM, Intel Media Graphics (R) 4 Family with IntelGMA 4500 M HD graphics. 
5 year-old laptop PC specs(Toshiba Satellite A210) : AMD Athlon 64 x2 1.9 GHz CPU, ATI Radeon X1200 128 MB Video Memory graphics card, 3072 MB 667 Mhz DDR2 RAM. (1 stick 2 gigabytes and 1 stick 1 gigabytes)
5 year-old laptop PC specs(Toshiba Satellite A210) : AMD Athlon 64 x2 1.9 GHz CPU, ATI Radeon X1200 128 MB Video Memory graphics card, 3072 MB 667 Mhz DDR2 RAM. (1 stick 2 gigabytes and 1 stick 1 gigabytes)
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unclerico
Member Posts: 237 ■■■■□□□□□□
1) Metro Ethernet is the layer 2 transport for things such as MPLS. Think of it as a really long Ethernet segment between yourself and your service provider. MPLS is what is referred to as a layer 2 1/2 protocol and is used primarily in service provider networks. When a packet is sent from a CE device to a PE device and the destination of that packet is across the service providers cloud, the PE device will impose/push an MPLS label between the layer 2 header and the the layer 3 header. This way all packets switched based on label as opposed to IP information. Metro Ethernet is the road and MPLS is the car carrying people down that road.
2) MPLS is just switching packets based on label as opposed to routing based on layer 3 information. If you are a service provider and have customers that have multiple offices and you need to securely connect them, you add the VPN capabilites with VRF's, route-distinguishers, route-targets, and MP-BGP. This way you can have customer address ranges overlap without issue and you can selectively leak address information if you need to connect customer a and customer b without affecting any other customers.
The ME switch will terminate fiber into your facility. From there you have an Ethernet handoff from the switch to the router. You will typically peer with your service provider via BGP to inject your routes or you will need to call them to inject your routes. From your side there is no knowledge of MPLS. The PE device that you are peering with will be running MPLS on the "inside" interface(s) to create labels for your routes. They will use a VRF and establish a unique route-distinguisher and route-target information. The route-distinguisher is prepended to your prefixes to make them unique. The route-target determines the VPN membership of your routes.
Does this answer your question??Preparing for CCIE Written -
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drkat
Banned Posts: 703
They're entirely two different things.
Providers provide types of "facilities" T1, T3, Metro-E. Basically it's Ethernet over fiber/copper. MPLS is within the provider cloud and is done once the packet traverses the Provider Edge.
Typically Metro E topology:
Provider Edge -> Carrier Ethernet Switch -> Carrier Cloud (Fiber, etc) to a copper hand off to the Customer Prem
So basically if you have MPLS only you'll have say vlan 10 configured on your CPE and your traffic comes back to the PE and the packet is labeled with a vrf and routed via the vrf table. This is the MPLS cloud.
Providers love Metro E because they can do QnQ and provide MPLS/Internet over a single circuit without installing a frame-relay T1.
MPLS VPN could be a few things but most likely will be as described above. However some carriers will set you up with VPN into a concentrator which has an ACL providing access into the MPLS cloud.
Hope this helps -
Optionsit_consultant
Member Posts: 1,903
My metro ethernet provider uses MPLS for switching. Metro ethernet - like unclerico said, is the medium that the packets transport on. I don't have the technical specs for my metro ethernet provider but I am fairly sure that they don't use ethernet signalling on their transport cabling. The "metro ethernet" is really a sales term. They say it to so you understand that it is as if you actually yanked a CAT6 cable from building to building.
I have heard a lot of terms for the private connection between the sites, private line, private ethernet, virtual ethernet, etc. They all describe basically the same thing - a layer 2 connection between two of your sites. You can get the metro ethernet (copper over eithernet, fiber, etc) without the private line, but at that point I see people start calling it simply 'COE' or 'Fiber'.