VPLS and Aggregated Ethernet Interfaces
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.
Forwarding is based on a lookup of the DA MAC address. For the remote site, if a packet needs to be forwarded over an LSP, the packet is encapsulated and forwarded through the LSP. If the packet destination is a local site, it is forwarded over appropriate local site interface. For an aggregated Ethernet interface on the local site, packets are sent out of the load-balanced child interface. The Packet Forwarding Engine acquires the child link to transmit the data.
In the VPLS documentation, the word router in terms such as PE router is used to refer to any device that provides routing functions.
When a received packet does not have a match to a MAC address in the forwarding database, the packet is forwarded over a set of interfaces determined from a lookup in the flooding database based on the incoming interface. This is denoted by a flood next hop. The flood next hop can include the aggregated Ethernet interface as the set of interfaces to flood the packet.
Each VPLS routing instance configured on a PE router has its own forwarding database entries that associate all of the MAC addresses the VPLS routing instance acquires with each corresponding port. A route is added to the kernel with a MAC address as the prefix and the next hop used to reach the destination. The route is an interface if the destination is local. For a remote destination, the route is a next hop for the remote site.
For local aggregated Ethernet interfaces on M Series and T Series routers, learning is based on the parent aggregated Ethernet logical interface. To age out MAC addresses for aggregated Ethernet interfaces, each Packet Forwarding Engine is queried to determine where the individual child interfaces are located. MAC addresses are aged out based on the age of the original interface.
For MX Series routers and EX Series switches, when a Dense Port Concentrator (DPC) learns a MAC address it causes the Routing Engine to age out the entry. This behavior applies to all logical interfaces. For an aggregated Ethernet logical interface, once all the member DPCs have aged out the entry, the entry is deleted from the Routing Engine.