Re: [mpls-linux-devel] L2 VPLS thoughts

[James R. L. <jl...@mi...>]

First off, I think it is very cool that you are digging into the
code and trying to get new stuff to work.  Thank you very much for
the time you're putting in to this.

On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 11:25:48AM -0400, Scott A. Yoder wrote:
> James,
> 
> I wanted to get your ideas on setting up a statically configured (not BGP signalled) layer 2 VPLS with Quagga.
> 
> I see you've got some "xconnect vfi" commands in ldp_vty.c as placeholders and commented out l2cc_interface code. What
> were your plans for these commands?

These commands were intended for EoMPLS (LDP) configuration.  There is nothing
saying that it couldn't be extended to support a static mode and VPLS as well.

> Ultimately I'd like to get the inner label stack for the VPLS distributed via BGP but probably should start with static
> configuration.

This is probably a good approach.  There are many issues that need
to be resolved still, like how to determine when and how to configure
a label stack in the forwarding plane, and how to build the L2 "stuff" like
bridges and what not.  Not to mention the work you're doing below.

> Just as an fyi I was able to set up a multipoint L2 VPLS without LDP with a few minor kernel mods and mpls-linux patches.
> I did a simple split-horizon patch to the Linux bridging module and added an option to the mpls tunnel code to set the
> interface type to ethernet for bridging support. I wanted to use the virtual MPLS tunnel interface so the normal Linux
> bridging code would function correctly. Using ebtables to send frames to the bridge works fine for a 1-1 tunnel but
> doesn't allow for proper MAC learning in a multipoint VPLS setup.

<snip>

I would very much like to add the "interface type" support that you've
implemented.  You can post the patch to sourceforge.  Please notify
me when its been posted.

> Do you think we can use any of these techniques within Quagga/LDPD? I'm thinking we'll configure a targeted LDP session
> to the remote LER and set up a tunnel interface to add the inner VPLS label to the dynamically allocated label added
> by the targeted session.

The idea is that the neighbour configured in the "xconnect vfi" results
in a targeted LDP session.

> Thanks,
> Scott Yoder
> Support Engineer
> ImageStream Internet Solutions, Inc.
> E-mail: sy...@im...
> 
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-- 
James R. Leu
jl...@mi...