Configuring Interfaces for VPLS Routing
On each PE router and for each VPLS routing instance, specify which interfaces are intended for the VPLS traffic traveling between PE and CE routers. To specify the interface for VPLS traffic, include the interface statement in the routing instance configuration:
You can include this statement at the following hierarchy levels:
- [edit routing-instances routing-instance-name]
- [edit logical-systems logical-system-name routing-instances routing-instance-name]
You must also define each interface by including the following statements:
You can include these statements at the following hierarchy levels:
- [edit interfaces interface-name]
- [edit logical-systems logical-system-name interfaces interface-name]
 | Note: In the VPLS documentation, the word router in terms such as PE router is used to refer to any device that provides routing functions. |
The following sections provide enough information to enable you to configure interfaces for VPLS routing. For detailed information about configuring interfaces and the statements at the [edit interfaces] hierarchy level, see the Junos® OS Network Interfaces.
Configuring the VPLS Interface Name
Specify both the physical and logical portions of the interface name, in the following format:
For example, in ge-1/2/1.2, ge-1/2/1 is the physical portion of the interface name and 2 is the logical portion. If you do not specify the logical portion of the interface name, 0 is set by default.
A logical interface can be associated with only one routing instance.
If you enable a routing protocol on all instances by specifying interfaces all when configuring the master instance of the protocol at the [edit protocols] hierarchy level, and you configure a specific interface for VPLS routing at the [edit routing-instances routing-instance-name] hierarchy level, the latter interface statement takes precedence and the interface is used exclusively for VPLS.
If you explicitly configure the same interface name at both the [edit protocols] and [edit routing-instances routing-instance-name] hierarchy levels and then attempt to commit the configuration, the commit operation fails.
Configuring VPLS Interface Encapsulation
You need to specify an encapsulation type for each PE-router-to-CE-router interface configured for VPLS. This section describes the encapsulation statement configuration options available for VPLS. For a complete description of all of the options available for this statement, see the Junos® OS Network Interfaces.
Tvo configure the encapsulation type on the physical interface, include the encapsulation statement:
You can include the encapsulation statement for physical interfaces at the following hierarchy levels:
- [edit interfaces interface-name]
- [edit logical-systems logical-system-name interfaces interface-name]
You can configure the following physical interface encapsulations for VPLS routing instances:
- ethernet-vpls—Use Ethernet VPLS encapsulation
on Ethernet interfaces that have VLAN 802.1Q tagging and VPLS enabled.
The PE router expects to receive Ethernet frames with VLAN tags that
are not service-delimiting. The Ethernet frames are not meaningful
to the PE router and cannot be used by the service provider to separate
customer traffic.
On M Series routers (except the M320 router), the 4-port Fast Ethernet TX PIC and the 1-port, 2-port, and 4-port, 4-slot Gigabit Ethernet PICs can use the Ethernet VPLS encapsulation type.
- ether-vpls-over-atm-llc—For ATM intelligent queuing (IQ) interfaces only, use the Ethernet virtual private LAN service (VPLS) over ATM LLC encapsulation to bridge Ethernet interfaces and ATM interfaces over a VPLS routing instance (as described in RFC 2684, Multiprotocol Encapsulation over ATM Adaptation Layer 5). Packets from the ATM interfaces are converted to standard ENET2/802.3 encapsulated Ethernet frames with the frame check sequence (FCS) field removed.
- extended-vlan-vpls—Use extended virtual
LAN (VLAN) VPLS encapsulation on Ethernet interfaces that have VLAN
802.1Q tagging and VPLS enabled and that must accept packets
carrying TPIDs 0x8100, 0x9100, and 0x9901. On M Series routers
(except the M320 router), the 4-port Fast Ethernet TX PIC and the
1-port, 2-port, and 4-port, 4-slot Gigabit Ethernet PICs can use the
Ethernet VPLS encapsulation type.
Note: The built-in Gigabit Ethernet PIC on an M7i router does not support extended VLAN VPLS encapsulation.
- vlan-vpls—Use VLAN VPLS encapsulation on
Ethernet interfaces with VLAN 802.1Q tagging and VPLS enabled. The
PE router expects to receive Ethernet frames with VLAN tags that are
service-delimiting. These VLAN tags can be used by the service provider
to separate customer traffic. For example, LAN traffic from different
customers can flow through the same service provider switch, which
can then apply VLAN tags to distinguish one customer’s traffic
from the others. The traffic can then be forwarded to the PE router.
Interfaces with VLAN VPLS encapsulation accept packets carrying standard TPID values only. On M Series routers (except the M320 router), the 4-port Fast Ethernet TX PIC and the 1-port, 2-port, and 4-port, 4-slot Gigabit Ethernet PICs can use the Ethernet VPLS encapsulation type.
To configure the encapsulation type for logical interfaces, include the encapsulation statement:
You can include the encapsulation statement for logical interfaces at the following hierarchy levels:
- [edit interfaces interface-name unit number]
- [edit logical-systems logical-system-name interfaces interface-name unit number]
You can configure the following logical interface encapsulations for VPLS routing instances:
- ether-vpls-over-atm-llc—Use Ethernet VPLS over Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) logical link control (LLC) encapsulation to bridge Ethernet interfaces and ATM interfaces over a VPLS routing instance (as described in RFC 2684, Multiprotocol Encapsulation over ATM Adaptation Layer 5). Packets from the ATM interfaces are converted to standard ENET2/802.3-encapsulated Ethernet frames with the frame check sequence (FCS) field removed. This encapsulation type is supported on ATM intelligent queuing (IQ) interfaces only.
- vlan-vpls—Use VLAN VPLS encapsulation on
Ethernet interfaces with VLAN 802.1Q tagging and VPLS enabled. The
PE router expects to receive Ethernet frames with VLAN tags that are
service-delimiting. These VLAN tags can be used by the service provider
to separate customer traffic. For example, LAN traffic from different
customers can flow through the same service provider switch, which
can then apply VLAN tags to distinguish one customer's traffic from
the others. The traffic can then be forwarded to the PE router.
Interfaces with VLAN VPLS encapsulation accept packets carrying standard TPID values only. On M Series routers (except the M320 router), the 4-port Fast Ethernet TX PIC and the 1-port, 2-port, and 4-port, 4-slot Gigabit Ethernet PICs can use the Ethernet VPLS encapsulation type.
Note: Label-switched interfaces (LSIs) do not support VLAN VPLS encapsulation. Therefore, you can only use VLAN VPLS encapsulation on a PE-router-to-CE-router interface and not a core-facing interface.
When you configure the physical interface encapsulation as vlan-vpls, you also need to configure the same interface encapsulation for the logical interface. You need to configure the vlan-vpls encapsulation on the logical interface because the vlan-vpls encapsulation allows you to configure a mixed mode, where some of the logical interfaces use regular Ethernet encapsulation (the default for logical interfaces) and some use vlan-vpls. For more information, see the Junos® OS Network Interfaces.
Enabling VLAN Tagging
Junos OS supports receiving and forwarding routed Ethernet frames with 802.1Q virtual local area network (VLAN) tags and running the Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP) over 802.1Q-tagged interfaces. For VPLS to function properly, configure the router to receive and forward frames with 802.1Q VLAN tags by including the vlan-tagging statement at the [edit interfaces interface-name] hierarchy level:
Gigabit Ethernet interfaces can be partitioned. You can assign up to 4095 different logical interfaces, one for each VLAN, but you are limited to a maximum of 1024 VLANs on any single Gigabit Ethernet or 10-Gigabit Ethernet port. Fast Ethernet interfaces can also be partitioned, with a maximum of:
- 1024 logical interfaces for the 4-port FE PIC
- 1024 logical interfaces for the 2-port Fixed Interface Card (FIC) on an M7i router
- 16 logical interfaces for the M40e router
Table 1 lists VLAN ID ranges by interface type.
Table 1: VLAN ID Range by Interface Type
Interface Type | VLAN ID Range |
|---|---|
Fast Ethernet | 512 through 1023 |
Gigabit Ethernet | 512 through 4094 |
Configuring VLAN IDs for Logical Interfaces
You can bind a VLAN identifier to a logical interface by including the vlan-id statement:
You can include this statement at the following hierarchy levels:
- [edit interfaces interface-name unit logical-unit-number]
- [edit logical-systems logical-system-name interfaces interface-name unit logical-unit-number]
You can also configure a logical interface to forward packets and learn MAC addresses within each VPLS routing instance configured with a VLAN ID that matches a VLAN ID specified in a list using the vlan-id-list statement. VLAN IDs can be entered individually using a space to separate each ID, entered as an inclusive list separating the starting VLAN ID and ending VLAN ID with a hyphen, or a combination of both.
For example, to configure the VLAN IDs 20 and 45 and the range of VLAN IDs between 30 and 40, issue the following command from the CLI:
set interfaces ge-1/0/1 unit 1 vlan-id-list [20 30-40 45];
To configure a list of VLAN IDs for a logical interface, include the vlan-id-list statement:
You can include this statement at the following hierarchy levels:
- [edit interfaces interface-name unit logical-unit-number]
- [edit logical-systems logical-system-name interfaces interface-name unit logical-unit-number]
For more information about how to configure VLANs, see the Junos® OS Network Interfaces. For detailed information about how VLAN identifiers in a VPLS routing instance are processed and translated, see the MX Series Layer 2 Configuration Guide.
Enabling VLANs for Hub and Spoke VPLS Networks
For hub and spoke VPLS networks, you need to configure the swap option for the output-vlan-map statement on the hub facing interface of each spoke PE router. The output-vlan-map statement ensures that the vlan ID of the spoke PE router matches the VLAN ID of the hub PE router in the VPLS network. The following configuration example illustrates an interface configuration with the output-vlan-map statement included:
Configuring Aggregated Ethernet Interfaces for VPLS
You can configure aggregated Ethernet interfaces between CE devices and PE routers for VPLS routing instances. Traffic is load-balanced across all of the links in the aggregated interface. If one or more links in the aggregated interface fails, the traffic is switched to the remaining links.
For more information about how aggregated Ethernet interfaces function in the context of VPLS, see VPLS and Aggregated Ethernet Interfaces.
To configure aggregated Ethernet interfaces for VPLS, configure the interface for the VPLS routing instance as follows:
You can configure the following physical link-layer encapsulation types for the VPLS aggregated Ethernet interface:
- ethernet-vpls
- extended-vlan-vpls
- flexible-ethernet-services
- vlan-vpls
For the interface configuration statement, in aex, the x represents the interface instance number to complete the link association; x can be from 0 through 127, for a total of 128 aggregated interfaces.
For more information about how to configure aggregated Ethernet interfaces, see the Junos® OS Network Interfaces.
The aggregated Ethernet interface must also be configured for the VPLS routing instance as shown in the following example:
Interface ae0.0 represents the aggregated Ethernet interface in the routing instance configuration. The VPLS routing instance configuration is otherwise standard.
