MPLS Design

[alan]

Looking at converting a smaller SP network to MPLS.

H/W is a 7206VXR w/NPE300

- 256MB DRAM

- 20480K bytes of Flash PCMCIA card at slot 0

- 125440K bytes of ATA PCMCIA card at slot 1

- 4096K bytes of Flash internal SIMM

Multiple ATM vc supporting

- ATM - to Frame (CE)

- ADSL

- ATM

- IDSL

Would run primarily static routes or OSPF/EIGRP as required.

7206 has approx 50 subinterfaces for various cstomers

Only selected customers would be migrated to MPLS VPN, others (e.g. those with a single office only) would be routed in a global table

Assume an initial count of 10-12 vrf instances

Ref http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk436/tk428/technologies_configuration_example09186a00801445fb.shtml#diag

1. Can I safely collapse the PE1/PE2/P onto a single platform (the 7206)?

2. IGW is replaced by PIX

3. Is the NPE300 adequate?

4. Any potential design issues?

[gmarogi]

If the VPN sites are attached to different devices, then you need separate PEs and must be running BGP between them. If all sites attach to the same device, the VRF should be enough to provide the isolation on the same PE. The P router is not mandatory. The memory you require wil also depend on the number of routes in each VRF.

[romccallum]

I wouldnt use the NPE-300 to do what you are looking to do. I would opt for the NPE-G1 processor board and even at that depending on how much traffic you have coming out of your box the memory you require could be as much as 1gig.

[n-saquib]

1. Can I safely collapse the PE1/PE2/P onto a single platform (the 7206)?

Yes

3. Is the NPE300 adequate?

Yes

4. Any potential design issues?

only how much traffic you want to run i see NPE300 working fine with 100Mb traffic.

MPLS-Layer3 VPN do not have much load on resources