[AusNOG] MPLS/VPLS solution

[Ben Dale]

<snip> 

>> I think the article misses the key selling point of VPLS which is separation of routing from customer and provider, in which case there should never be any reason to see broadcast storms inside a VPLS when all CE devices are L3.
> 
> If you're trolling, shame on me.... ;)
> 
> You've never experienced seen a faulty transceiver?  A misconfigured
> customer device?  Never misconfigured an access, agg or core device
> yourself?  It's OK, we all make mistakes.

Touché - aside from fat fingers and hardware failures then ; )

>> In general it's a good practice to implementing MAC-limiting on VPLS PE anyway so that only a single MAC is learnt from the customer (being the CE router's WAN-facing interface) which ensures they don't cause grief when they accidentally plug in a switch.
> 
> People like VPLS because it is simple and allows them to use
> inexpensive equipment.  Some providers only do 1-to-N site VPLSes
> (with mesh spoke LSPs, f.e.), some will do any-to-any sites.
> Obviously there's a reason some provider's wont do any-to-any.
> Customers will buy switches to interconnect their sites because they
> are cheaper than routers, and because _you are providing them a single
> broadcast domain_, rather than a bunch of links which aren't in the
> same domain.  If this weren't the case, why would they buy a VPLS,
> then?  (They can route between their sites more effectively using
> routing protocols, if they have to buy routers).
> 
> If your customers are so well trained they buy VPLSes and then don't
> put switches on, all that's happened is more money has been spent for
> equipment which does the same stuff in a different way as you used to
> do it.   This tends to make everyone unhappy.

Again I can only speak from personal experience, but I find that in my customer base, those who are savvy enough to know what a VPLS is are generally aware of the topology it brings to the table.  Those that have moved from traditional VPRN services to VPLS have done so to bring back control of their routing - whether for technical reasons (redundancy scenarios) or political (they hate having to log a ticket to get their VPN updated every time a new subnet appears in their data center).  They tend to have their own routers already in their branches (survivable VoIP gateways, WAN acceleration etc) so there is no hardware duplication - and there has always been a bit of CPE on site whether it's a VPRN or a VPLS.

Anyway, it's interesting to hear other viewpoints.