Brocade Multi-Service IronWare Multiprotocol Label Switch (MPLS) Configuration Guide (Supporting R05.6.00) - Manual (Page 768)

744 Multi-Service IronWare Multiprotocol Label Switch (MPLS) Configuration Guide
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Overview
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Packet Coming from the Local End-point of a VPLS-VE:
- to a VPLS uplink of same or another VPLS-VE instance
- to a local VPLS endpoint of same or another VPLS-VE instance
- to a VE over VLAN interface
- to a normal IP interface over a physical interface
- to an IP-over-MPLS interface
- to GRE tunnel
Packet coming from the Uplink (Remote End-point) of a VPLS-VE:
- to a VPLS uplink of another VPLS-VE instance
- to a local VPLS endpoint of same or another VPLS-VE instance
- to a VE over VLAN interface
- to a normal IP interface over a physical interface
- to an IP-over-MPLS interface
Packet coming from the non-VPLS-VE interfaces:
- Legacy, VE over VLAN, IPoMPLS, GRE tunnel interface to a VPLS-VE local endpoint
- Legacy, VE over VLAN, IPoMPLS interface to a VPLS-VE remote endpoint
• Unsupported unicast routing:
- packet from a VPLS uplink to GRE tunnel
- packet from GRE tunnel to VPLS uplink
ECMP
When a VE is configured over a LSP load-balanced enabled VPLS interface, only the first active
tunnel is used to complete the L3 forwarding. VPLS L2 switched traffic continues to load-balance
on all tunnels.
VPLS packet routing
A VPLS instance with the VE interface enabled can participate in routing protocols exchanging
routes with PEs on remote customer sites. Multiple VPLS instances can belong to the same VRF
instance, for example, the user may configure different VPLS instances to different sites, while
having all the sites in the same routing area.
A unicast packet that needs to be routed has the router's (PE) MAC in the MAC destination address
field, and is subjected to Layer 3 processing. Routing for VPLS packets is no different than
non-VPLS packets. The next hop obtained from the routing table could be a VLAN interface, a VPLS
endpoint or a VPLS uplink.
CPU protection
CPU Protection only applies to unknown unicast packets. When CPU protection is enabled, protocol
packets such as ARP is always flooded by hardware.
VE over VPLS Peer FSM
When a VPLS interface is configured for VE, the peer is brought UP even when no local endpoints
are configured.