> ""John Neiberger"" wrote in message ... > > bulk of their traffic. When considering a move to VoIP or expanded > > video conferencing this can create some traffic shaping issues. > > For VoIP, you want to consider a control/data plane that makes this > traffic forwarding optimal...the topology is of less concern, no?
The topology is not much of a concern for VoIP. Assuming point-to-point links we'd need each location to have at least two routes back to the hub for other reasons. This increased the number of frame relay PVCs at each location, which in turn caused over-restrictive-yet-necessary traffic shaping issues. > > > traffic shaping. In fact, traffic shaping might not be necessary; > > LLQ might be all that is necessary. I'll have to ponder that some > > more. > > You'll probably want outbound queue and drop mechanisms on a > class-based model (e.g. CBLLQ with WRED). Shaping and FR > Interworking seem to over-complicate what you are trying to do. > > > Regardless, with a 2764-style VPN like the Qwest PRN we'd end up > > with a fully-meshed network where all nodes appear to be one-hop > > Where did you read that L2VPN's (or L2TPv3 Pseudowires) don't do > full-mesh? I guess that was an assumption. After reading the interview with Martini I took a look at Level3's offering and it is point-to-point. In my mind I just assumed that meant more of a traditional hub-and-spoke design and not a full mesh. A full mesh in our network would require the creation and management of over 5300 PVCs. Is that reasonable? > > > on a per-PVC basis. Since we're still considering moving to IP > > Telephony and we're expanding our use of video conferencing this > > You have a lot of options. I recommend Sprint first, then Level-3, > then GX. Unless you are already in bed with Qwest or AT&T, they > won't give you the time-of-day for support (and you are going to > need good support for an offering like this). In particular, I > recommend Sprint's PW option (UTI on Cisco GSR), and Level-3's > (3)Packet MPLS-VPN option (Martini L2VPN on Laurel Networks). I haven't checked into Sprint yet and I've just browsed through the marketing blurbs of Level-3's option. We are heavily in bed with Qwest, but they also have the benefit of infrastructure in Denver. They might even be better prepared to handle our network than Level-3. I don't know if these other providers have the infrastructure in Colorado to support our network. As an example, I checked into one offering over a year ago--I think it was Worldcom, but I'm not sure--and they only had a single POP in Denver, and there may have been only a single router, with some redundancy, to handle our entire network. That sounded a little silly to me. Do you really get the benefit of MPLS when your traffic never leaves the router? :-) Besides, they also said that they would have to especially provision new big pipes out to some outlying cities in order to reach many of our branches. It would simply have been too much of a pain to deal with. At least with Qwest our connectivity would be quite diverse and there wouldn't be a single point of failure. Perhaps competitor's networks have been built out enough that this is no longer an issue. Regardless of the possibilities of failure, Qwest can reach *every* branch--including the few in California--right now. Still, I will check further into these other options. I'm really enjoying learning about the possibilities. > > Any other VPN offering sounds iffy to me....coming from my experience, > but you should seek other opinions and do a full analysis for > yourself. I had never even heard of RFC 2764 before, and I've > never been impressed by the Passport/Accelar/etc. The Qwest PRN runs on the Shasta BSN-5000 platform. > > > My feeling after spending a few days reading about this is that > > given a moderately large hub-and-spoke network, a L3 VPN might be > > of more benefit than a L2 VPN. > > I'm curious as to how you came to this conclusion, what did you > read/hear? > > -dre That was only an initial supposition, really, not a solid position, and that's based primarily on my assumption that a full mesh with an L2 VPN would be cumbersome. If that's not true then I'll have to rethink my supposition. Keep in mind that I'm a newby with this VPN stuff. :-) It's very interesting but I've really only digging into it deeply for a handful of days. Many thanks, John Message Posted at: http://www.groupstudy.com/form/read.php?f=7&i=73262&t=73255 -------------------------------------------------- FAQ, list archives, and subscription info: http://www.groupstudy.com/list/cisco.html Report misconduct and Nondisclosure violations to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
