INE Vol 1 - Multicast Lab 1 - ip pim dense mode.

I still have to revisit the last lab and review the comments in the last post but I went ahead and did the first lab of the IP Multicast section in Vol 1 INE.

Relatively easy as it's basic PIM Dense mode multicast and was covered under R&S.

There's 13 labs in this section and that will complete Vol 1. I'm also going over the CoD for SP from INE too and I'm finding them very helpful

I'm thinking of going on to IEMENTOR's lab book... but after that, what should I tackle next? IPX vol 2 or INE vol 2 (both have 10 labs)...

INE Vol 1 - Lab 26 - finished - Mulicast over MPLS VPNs

I completed this lab, albeit, I had to cheat and look at the solutions for some parts since I wasn't sure what to do.

Question:

1. What is the purpose of MDT under the VRF?

I suppose, I'll Cisco Univercd or google it.

Also my verifications didn't come up. When I do a "show ip pim vrf SW1-SW2 neighbor" I don't actually see the tunnel0 interface of R3 or R6. The tunnel interface is up/up though.

Think I have to read about Multicast over MPLS A LOT more.

INE Vol 1 - Lab 25 - finished - MPLS QOS

QoS is pretty straight forward for SP as it is for R&S. Just have to read carefully what's being classified, what's being marked, and where and what direction to apply the service policy. Then you have to make sure it's consistent throughout the SP network.

It's more of exercise in being careful and thorough then anything else.

On to the Last lab in the MPLS section...

INE Vol 1 - Lab 24 - finished - TE Unequal Cost Load Balancing

Completed this lab pretty easily since it was combination of the 2 before it, one dynamic tunnel and one explicit tunnel, manipulating the tunnel bandwidth for unequal cost load balancing via OSPF.

Something I don't understand is why INE didn't have TE labs based on ISIS, the 3 TE labs were using OSPF. I understand they are pretty similar to each other with an addition of using Wide Metric (metric style wide) under the physical interfaces. But still, it would have been nice to through 1 lab in there with IS-IS.

On to the next lab.

INE Vol 1 - Lab 23 - finished - TE Explicit PE to PE tunnel.

Very similar with the last lab with exception of creating an
'ip explicit-path name ABC enable' and then on the tunnel interface
'tunnel mpls traffic-eng path-option 1 explicit name ABC'

One gotcha is to make sure that the HOPs in the list are correct... I had a 10.x.x.x network but I put it in as 150.x.x.x because the rest of the network was like that.

Another good one to review and dissect.

INE Vol 1 - Lab 22 - finished - TE Dynamic PE to PE tunnels

This one was my first exposure to Traffic Engineering (TE) and it was an eye opening lab on how much I don't know about TE.

Notes:
1. enable 'mpls traffic-eng' globally on MPLS routers (PE and P)
2. enable 'mpls traffic-eng' on a per interface basis for the links that are MPLS enabled
3. enable 'mpls traffic-eng' under the OSPF process specifying a router-id and area
4. configure RSVP on a per interface basis for the tunnel path
5. configure tunnel interfaces on the PE end points
6. advertise the tunnel interface/ip in OSPF.

TE is something I need to read up on but doing the lab before hand actually will help understand what I'm going to read.

INE Vol 1 - Lab 21 - Question? - Controlling MPLS Label Distribution.

So I configured the following to limit the distribution of labels local to a router.

R3's Loopback is 150.1.3.3/32 and R6's Loopback is 150.1.6.6/32

#access-list 1 permit 150.1.3.3
#access-list 1 permit 150.1.6.6
#access-list 1 deny any

#mpls ldp advertise-labels for 1

But I'm still able to see labels for other prefixes...

Any thoughts on why this is? I even cleared MPLS LDP Nei * but still see labels for other prefixes...

INE Vol 1 - Lab 20 - finished - VRF Lite (Multi VRF)

Good lab to get an understanding of doing VRF Lite on the CE routers which can be done when a customer subscribes to more then 1 VRF at a site but with only 1 CE router.

From the CE's perspective, it has multiple logical (can be physical) interfaces up stream to the PE. Each link is put into it's own VRF. Downstream to other customer internal routers, each link is put into the respective VRFs. The VPN/VRF table is extended to the CEs. This segregates the 2 networks even when there's only 1 CE. One thing to note, on the CE's there's no need to import or export Route Targets, that's still done on the PE.

The PE's put the logical interfaces into different VRFs and reference the same RDs used on the CEs for their corresponding links/VRFs, for route targets. Basically the PE configuration stays the same EXCEPT for the fact the link to the CE is a single physical link but with multiple logical links.

Good lab to review and build by just looking at the topology.

INE Vol 1 - Lab 19 - CSC Hierarchical MPLS VPNs

This one was pretty straight forward as well and the name implies the structure of the VPNs. One CSC VPN/VRF to connect the Customer Providers network and then the Customer Provider has End Customers so each of them will have their own VRF.

Main point is that redistribution occurs on the Main Service Providers network and then once again on the Customer Service Providers network to get end to end reachability.

On to the next one.

INE Vol 1 - Lab 18 - CSC MPLS enabled.

Pretty straight forward, although I should definitely read up on the theory on these. This lab, compared to the last one, was a bit easier since there were less BGP peerings since the links were MPLS enabled throughout both Service Providers. In the last lab, not all links in the provider cloud was MPLS enabled, hence the title, IP ONLY.

On to the next one.

INE Vol 1 - Lab 17 - CSC IP Only

First lab for Carrier Supporting Carrier (CSC) and it's still not very clear to me on some of configurations. Still got it to work by following the tasks but not as intuitive as the other labs.

I still made the same mistake, although I caught it much faster this time, as in the previous lab. "MPLS IP" was missing from some of the provider links, the control plane (ie. the routing table) look good, saw the BGP route but the forwarding plane was messed up because I couldn't ping.

At least I'm learning.

BGP AS 2 was used as the Service Provider servicing the Customer Service Provider and BGP AS 1 was used as the Customer Service Provider's network. BGP AS 65001 and 65002 were customer CEs connecting to the Customer Service Provider's network.

Within AS 1, I had to use route-reflectors in order to get around the fully meshed iBGP peering rule and another note I had to mutually redistribute on the Service Provider routers supporting the Customer Service Provider before iBGP could be formed. This was asked to be done in the last step.

On to the next one.