Cisco 15327 - Manual (Page 293)

C H A P T E R
18-1
Ethernet Card Software Feature and Configuration Guide, R7.2
18
Configuring Ethernet over MPLS
This chapter describes how to configure Ethernet over Multiprotocol Label Switching (EoMPLS) on the
ML-Series card.
This chapter includes the following major sections:
• Understanding EoMPLS, page 18-1
• Configuring EoMPLS, page 18-4
• EoMPLS Configuration Example, page 18-9
• Monitoring and Verifying EoMPLS, page 18-12
Understanding EoMPLS
EoMPLS provides a tunneling mechanism for Ethernet traffic through an MPLS-enabled Layer 3 core.
It encapsulates Ethernet protocol data units (PDUs) inside MPLS packets and using label stacking
forwards them across the MPLS network. EoMPLS is an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF)
standard-track protocol based on the Martini draft, specifically the draft-martini-l2circuit-encap-mpls-01
and draft-martini-l2circuit-transport-mpls-05 sections.
EoMPLS allows service providers to offer customers a virtual Ethernet line service or VLAN service
using the service provider's existing MPLS backbone. It also simplifies service provider provisioning,
since the provider edge customer-leading edge (PE-CLE) equipment only needs to provide Layer 2
connectivity to the connected customer edge (CE) equipment.
Figure 18-1 shows an example of EoMPLS implemented on a service provider network. In the example,
the ML-Series card acts as PE-CLE equipment connecting to the Cisco GSR 12000 Series through an
RPR access ring. Point–to-point service is provided to CE equipment in different sites that connect
through ML-Series cards to the ML-Series card RPR access ring.