Buy or Renew
Buy or Renew
Cisco + Splunk: It’s a new day for your data. Learn more.
 
cancel
Turn on suggestions
Auto-suggest helps you quickly narrow down your search results by suggesting possible matches as you type.
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 
cancel
Start a conversation
510
Views
0
Helpful
4
Replies

Fragmentation Problem In L2MPLS

shivlu jain
Level 5
Level 5

‎05-12-2009 08:24 AM

hi

In case of l3 mpls CE packets without DF bit gets fragmented but in case of l2mpls fragmentation never occurs. Whats the reason for this?

regards

shivlu jain

Labels:
0 Helpful
4 Replies 4

Giuseppe Larosa
Hall of Fame
Hall of Fame

‎05-12-2009 08:50 AM

Hello Shivlu,

>> but in case of l2mpls fragmentation never occurs. Whats the reason for this?

Shortly:

neither the L2 carried PDU neither the carrying MPLS PDU provide a fragmentation mechanism.

L2 MPLS services require MTU tuning on the data path the MPLS MTU has to be big enough to host the carried L2 PDU and all the MPLS stack.

For making a comparison if you put an 1518 ethernet frame inside an L2TPv3 PDU it will be fragmented in travelling in an IP only network with IP MTU 1500 bytes.

But in this case the IP fragmentation services are used.

Hope to help

Giuseppe

0 Helpful

Harold Ritter
Cisco Employee
Cisco Employee

‎05-12-2009 12:53 PM

Shivlu,

The reason is that the fragmentation taking place for L3VPN is IP fragmentation. Core performs IP fragmentation on the packet and forwards the fragments using the egress label or label stack.

On the other hand, this can't be done for L2VPN as the packet payload is a L2 protocol (Ethernet, PPP, ATM, HDLC, etc).

Regards

Harold Ritter
Sr Technical Leader
CCIE 4168 (R&S, SP)
harold@cisco.com
México móvil: +52 1 55 8312 4915
Cisco México
Paseo de la Reforma 222
Piso 19
Cuauhtémoc, Juárez
Ciudad de México, 06600
México
0 Helpful

shivlu jain
Level 5
Level 5
In response to Harold Ritter

‎05-12-2009 09:01 PM

Hritter

I am unable to understand why ip fragmentation comes in L3VPN. In case of L3VPN the incoming and outgoing label are used for forwarding.

If we check the l2mpls case, the only difference is that the transport header is attached in it.

regards

shivlu jain

0 Helpful

Harold Ritter
Cisco Employee
Cisco Employee
In response to shivlu jain

‎05-13-2009 03:12 AM

Shivlu,

If fragmentation is needed for L3VPN, we simply take the payload (IP packet), we fragment it and forward it using the normal label (or label stack). This is a simple procedure and is based on existing standards.

For L2VPN on the other hand, we would need to start looking deeper in the payload to determined if the protocol transported by the L2 protocol is IP, fragment the IP packets, modify existing L2 header and create new ones. This procedure would be fairly complicated and is not standardized.

Regards

Harold Ritter
Sr Technical Leader
CCIE 4168 (R&S, SP)
harold@cisco.com
México móvil: +52 1 55 8312 4915
Cisco México
Paseo de la Reforma 222
Piso 19
Cuauhtémoc, Juárez
Ciudad de México, 06600
México
0 Helpful
Getting Started

Find answers to your questions by entering keywords or phrases in the Search bar above. New here? Use these resources to familiarize yourself with the community:

Customers Also Viewed These Support Documents