How can I join the native internal vlan1 of 2 sites over a WAN routed link?

Edil Cajigas · ‎01-29-2010

Hi there,

I have two sites with a Cisco 3825 each. Site B is connected to the service provider with a 100 mbps link. Site A is connected with a 400 mbps link as a trunk port because it is use to receive data from other sites. Each site with its own vlan ID. For Site B the vlan ID is 10 but it was defined only in router at site A, by defining a subinterface and using encapsulation dot1q. Site B have no reference to that vlan ID but I'm assuming that the vlan 10 should be defined at the service provider's network equipment. I think that they are using MPLS but that's completly transparent for me in terms that I have no control over their MPLS configuration. For my perspective it is like having all my sites connected to a switch.

I need to configure both routers in order to extend the internal native vlan1 from site A to site B to have both sites using the same IP address scheme. In other words a server at site A is 192.168.100.1 and another server at site B is 192.168.100.2 with the same netmask. I completely clear that it is not recommendable or advisable to this over the WAN but I have to do it anyways.

I tried using GRE/Tunnels but I couldn't pull it out. I also read about L2TP and VPLS but I don't understand the concept entirely. Encryption is not a concern for me, actually I don't want to use IPSec unless there is no other option.

Can you please help me?

Thanks for your attention!

Reza Sharifi · ‎01-29-2010

Hellp Edil,

If your service provider is running MPLS, then you can work with them to provision a layer-2 VPN for you and run EoMPLS. This way you can keep the same IP and VLAN for both sides of your connections. I would suggest using another VLAN in place of VLAN 1 and not use VLAN 1 at all, because that is the default/native VLAN and it is used for control traffic and not secure.

Please refere to this document in section EoMPLS and 802.1Q Tunneling for more info:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/switches/metro/catalyst3750m/software/release/12.2_25_seg_seg1/configuration/guide/swmpls.pdf

HTH

Reza

Edil Cajigas · ‎01-30-2010

Reza,

Thank you very much for your help.

To be completely clear with this. It is possible to do what I want using only GRE/Tunnels? Even if it is not the best methode. If so how? I just want to know for sure if GRE/Tunnels is something that I have to disccard not because it is a poor choice but because it can not provide me what I want.

I will have to check with the SP about EoMPLS. What they told me is that they can allow me to pass whatever vlan I want instead of only vlan 10 between SITE A and SITE B but that that's not something that they have done for their other customers and they will charge me a very hefty monthly fee, because in their service plan they charge a fee per vlan.

Best regards

Edil

Giuseppe Larosa · ‎01-30-2010

Hello Edil,

the right tool may be L2TPv3 that allows to build a L2 point-to-point transport service over IP.

It is supported on C3825 with appropriate feature set.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/ios/12_3t/12_3t2/feature/guide/gtl2tpv3.html

more specifically service can be defined on a per vlan based subinterface basis:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/ios/12_3t/12_3t2/feature/guide/gtl2tpv3.html#wp1043064

the limitations are those of performance of routers in use (so no chance to get 400 Mbps of traffic over the pipe)

Hope to help

Giuseppe

Edil Cajigas · ‎02-01-2010

Guseppe,

Thanks for your help. I did tried to use L2TPv3 following an example from another web site but the instrucction said to use a diggest command and that is not listed as a valid command in the IOS I'm using.

Any ideas? The other option I'm checking now is QinQ but again how can I use QinQ with vlan1, do you know of a good tutorial?

paolo bevilacqua · ‎01-30-2010

Why you want to bridge? What it means "I have to" ??

Everything works good and better with regular routing.

2 sites = 2 subnets.

Edil Cajigas · ‎02-01-2010

bevilacqua,

I have 2 sites and I want their internal native vlan1 to be the same. I was instructed to do it basically because we have two Exchange and Blackberry servers already published with a particular IP and we want to create a replica of those servers at SITE B for the continuity of service in case of a failure in SITE A.

The system administrator is using Exchange 2003. I check products like Neverfail and Doubletake but those are very expensive.

2 sites = 2 subnets = better = U R right... but I have to do it

paolo bevilacqua · ‎02-01-2010

From my understanding, replication does not require servers to be on same subnet..