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Flexible Ethernet Services Encapsulation

Flexible Ethernet services is a type of encapsulation that enables a physical interface to support different types of Ethernet encapsulations at the logical interface level. You can configure the Flexible Ethernet services encapsulation to support the service provider and the enterprise-style configuration. The below topics discuss the overview of flexible Ethernet services encapsulation and its configuration details.

Understanding Flexible Ethernet Services Encapsulation on Switches

Junos OS supports two different styles of configuration for switch interfaces: the service provider style and the enterprise style. The service provider style requires more configuration but provides greater flexibility. The enterprise style is easier to configure but offers less functionality. Each configuration style requires a different Ethernet encapsulation type. You can configure a physical interface to support both styles of configuration using flexible Ethernet services.

Note:

On EX4300, QFX5100 (running Junos OS 16.1R5 or earlier), and QFX5200, the service provider style and enterprise style interface configurations are handled differently within Junos OS. If the service provider style and enterprise style interface configurations are mixed, the egress VLAN translation within the hardware can be incorrectly programmed leading to forwarding issues across the configured ports. Use the service provider style configuration in a Q-in-Q scenario. For all other scenarios, use the enterprise style configuration.

Flexible Ethernet services is a type of encapsulation that enables a physical interface to support different types of Ethernet encapsulations at the logical interface level. Defining multiple per-unit Ethernet encapsulations makes it easier to customize Ethernet-based services to multiple hosts connected to the same physical interface.

Service Provider Style

The service provider style of configuration allows for customization of Ethernet-based services at the logical interface level. Service providers typically have multiple customers connected to the same physical interface. Using the service provider style, you can configure multiple logical interfaces on the physical interface, and associate each unit with a different VLAN. This provides the flexibility to configure different services for each customer, but also requires more configuration, because each feature must be explicitly configured on the logical interface.

When configuring a physical interface to support only the service provider style, the physical interface must be encapsulated with the extended-vlan-bridge option to support bridging features. VLAN tagging must also be configured on the physical interface so that it can operate in trunk mode and transmit Ethernet frames with VLAN tags for multiple VLANs. Each logical interface is bound to a unique VLAN ID.

Enterprise Style

The enterprise style of configuration is designed to provide basic bridging functionality for consumers of Ethernet-based services. The isolation of services for different customers on a single port is not required, because each port is typically connected to a host or is providing a trunk to another switch.

With the enterprise style of configuration, logical interfaces are placed into Layer 2 mode by specifying ethernet-switching as the interface family. Without using flexible Ethernet services, ethernet-switching can only be configured on a single logical unit, unit 0. You cannot bind a VLAN ID to unit 0, because these interfaces operate either in trunk mode, which supports traffic with various VLAN tags, or in access mode, which supports untagged traffic.

Flexible Ethernet Services

The flexible Ethernet services encapsulation type enables a physical interface to support both styles of configuration. To support the service provider style, flexible Ethernet services allows for encapsulations to be configured at the logical interface level instead of the physical interface. To support the enterprise style, flexible Ethernet services allows the ethernet-switching family to be configured on any logical interface unit number instead of only unit 0.

For example, the configuration below shows three logical interfaces configured on a physical interface, xe-0/0/51, that is encapsulated for flexible Ethernet services. Unit 100 and unit 200 are configured in the service provider style and unit 300 is configured in the enterprise style. The encapsulation type of vlan-bridge is used to enable bridging on unit 100 and unit 200, and family ethernet-switching enables bridging on unit 300.

Following are the guidelines to follow when you configure the flexible Ethernet services encapsulation:

  • On the QFX10000 line of switches, configuring either vlan-tagging or flexible-vlan-tagging with family ethernet-switching on the same interface is not supported.

  • Only on the QFX10000 and EX9200 line of switches, you can enable vlan-ccc encapsulation when flexible-ethernet-services is already enabled.

  • On QFX5100 switches, you can combine encapsulations on the same physical interface for vlan-bridge and family ethernet switching. Starting with Junos OS Release 16.1R6, you can also combine encapsulations on the same physical interface for family inet and family ethernet-switching.

  • It is not required that the unit number and VLAN ID match, but it is considered a best practice.

Configuring Flexible Ethernet Services Encapsulation to Support the Service Provider and Enterprise Styles of Configuration

Flexible Ethernet services is a type of encapsulation that enables a physical interface to specify Ethernet encapsulations at the logical interface level. Each logical interface can have a different Ethernet encapsulation. Defining multiple per-unit Ethernet encapsulations makes it easier to customize Ethernet-based services to multiple hosts connected to the same physical interface.

An Ethernet interface that is not encapsulated with flexible Ethernet services and is operating in Layer 2 mode is limited to a single logical interface unit (0). Bridging is enabled on the interface by configuring ethernet-switching as the interface family on unit 0. The ethernet-switching family can be configured only on logical interface unit 0, and no other logical units can be defined on that interface.

Some switching features, however, cannot be configured on logical interface unit 0. Features such as Q-in-Q tunneling require the logical interface to transmit VLAN-tagged frames. To enable a logical interface to receive and forward Ethernet frames tagged with a matching VLAN ID, you must bind the logical interface to that VLAN. These features must be configured on a logical interface unit other than 0, because you cannot bind a VLAN ID to unit 0.

When you encapsulate an interface by using flexible Ethernet services, you can configure a logical interface unit other than 0 with family ethernet-switching. You can also configure other logical interfaces on that same interface with different types of Ethernet encapsulations. This enables logical interfaces that are bound to a VLAN ID to coexist with logical interfaces configured with family ethernet-switching.

For example, if you configure PVLAN on the same physical interface on which you are configuring Q-in-Q tunneling, you can use flexible ethernet services to support the enterprise style of configuration for PVLAN, using family ethernet-switching, along with vlan-bridge encapsulation for Q-in-Q tunneling.

Best Practice:

We recommend you configure the following statements using groups when configuring devices that function as hardware VTEPs:

  • set interfaces interface-name flexible-vlan-tagging

  • set interfaces interface-name encapsulation extended-vlan-bridge

  • set interfaces interface-name native-vlan-id vlan-id

To configure the interface to support both the service provider and enterprise styles of configuration:

  1. Enable flexible Ethernet services encapsulation on the interface. The flexible-ethernet-services statement allows configuration of both service-provider-style logical interfaces and enterprise-style logical interfaces:
  2. Enable the interface to transmit packets with 802.1Q VLAN single-tagged and dual-tagged frames:
  3. Configure a logical interface (unit) on the interface:
    Note:

    Do not use logical interface unit 0. You must later bind a VLAN tag ID to the unit you specify in this step, and you cannot bind a VLAN tag ID to unit 0. It is a best practice to match the unit number to the VLAN ID to which the interface is bound.

  4. Encapsulate the logical interface for service provider style bridging configuration—for example, use vlan-bridge encapsulation on an interface to be used for Q-in-Q tunneling. (If you were configuring the interface only for Q-in-Q tunneling, you would use encapsulation extended-vlan-bridge on the physical interface.)
  5. Bind the logical interface from the preceding step to a VLAN ID:
  6. Configure another logical interface. (If you were configuring just PVLAN, we would recommend that you configure a single logical interface for all PVLAN domains on an interface.)
  7. Enable the logical interface in the preceding step for enterprise style bridging configuration:
  8. Assign VLAN membership to the logical interface:
  9. Configure the interface as a trunk interface to transmit frames with 802.1Q VLAN tags:
Note:

For EX4300 device, the service provider style configuration (encapsulation extended-vlan-bridge) is recommended only for QinQ scenarios. For other scenarios, use the enterprise style configuration.

See Also

Configure Flexible Ethernet Services Encapsulation to Include Layer 2 Interface Support with Other Encapsulations

Flexible Ethernet services is a type of encapsulation that enables a physical interface to specify Ethernet encapsulations at the logical interface level. Perform the following steps to configure flexible Ethernet services to support a Layer 2 bridging interface while simultaneously supporting other encapsulation options on the same physical interface.

Note:

On the QFX10000 line of Switches running Junos OS releases earlier than Release 21.2R1, you cannot configure vlan-bridging and any other encapsulations on an interface that has flexible-ethernet-services enabled.

Configure a physical or aggregated Ethernet interface to simultaneously support a VLAN based circuit cross-connect (CCC) connection, Layer 3 IP routing, and Layer 2 bridging:

  1. Enable flexible Ethernet services encapsulation on the interface.
  2. Configure the interface to support 802.1Q VLAN single-tagged and dual-tagged frames.
  3. Define a logical interface to support Ethernet VLAN encapsulation for CCC:
  4. Bind the L2 CCC logical interface from the preceding step to a VLAN ID. This step is needed for all logical interfaces because the physical interface is set for VLAN tagged traffic.
  5. Configure a second logical interface as an L3 routed IP interface.
  6. Bind the L3 logical interface from the preceding step to a VLAN ID:
  7. Configure a third logical interface to support VLAN based bridging by specifying vlan-bridge encapsulation on the logical unit.
  8. Bind the logical interface from the preceding step to a VLAN ID.
  9. Define a bridge domain and add the L2 logical interface.

Verify your configuration using the show interfaces interface-name command in the configuration mode.

See Also

Configure Flexible Ethernet Services Encapsulation to Support Multiple Logical Interfaces on the Same Physical Interface Mapped to the Same Bridge Domain

Flexible Ethernet services is a type of encapsulation that enables a physical interface to specify Ethernet encapsulations at the logical interface level. Perform the following steps to configure multiple logical interfaces on the same physical interface mapped to the same bridge domain.

Note:

The QFX10002-60C switches do not support this feature.

Configure a physical or aggregated Ethernet interface to simultaneously support multiple logical interfaces using the same bridge domain. You cannot configure an ESI interface as one of the logical interfaces over a physical interface when both are part of the same VLAN. ESI interfaces have a limitation.
Note:

The combination of enterprise-style and service provider-style interfaces on the same physical interface is not supported when there are multiple service provider style logical interfaces attached to the same bridge domain.

  1. Configure the interface to support 802.1Q VLAN single-tagged and dual-tagged frames.
  2. Enable flexible Ethernet services encapsulation on the interface.
  3. Configure a logical interface to support VLAN based bridging by specifying vlan-bridge encapsulation on the logical unit.
  4. Bind the logical interface from the preceding step to a VLAN ID. This step is needed for all logical interfaces because the physical interface is set for VLAN tagged traffic.
  5. Configure another logical interface to support VLAN based bridging by specifying vlan-bridge encapsulation on the logical unit.
  6. Bind the logical interface from the preceding step to a VLAN ID.
  7. Configure a bridge domain by specifying the VLAN name and assigning a VLAN ID:
  8. Bind the first logical interface to the bridge domain:
  9. Bind the second logical interface to the bridge domain.

Verify your configuration using the show interfaces interface-name and show vlans command in the configuration mode.

See Also

Change History Table

Feature support is determined by the platform and release you are using. Use Feature Explorer to determine if a feature is supported on your platform.

Release
Description
16.1R3
Starting with Junos OS Release 16.1R6, you can also combine encapsulations on the same physical interface for family inet and family ethernet-switching.