TCOM 611

MPLS: Advanced Technologies and Service Provider Implementations

The George Mason University

Spring 2008

Syllabus Date:  27 January, 2008

Class Meeting Time and Location:

Mondays 7:20 – 10:00 p.m.

Innovation Hall, Room TBD

Instructor: TomVan Meter

E-mail:  tomv@juniper.net (important - please specify TCOM611 in the subject line)

Phone: (703) 759-1570 (No calls after 10 p.m. any night or before 10 a.m. on weekends).

Class Vision:

Welcome to MPLS.  I hope this class will be a good overview of MPLS and how the industry uses it today.  I will try to provide the reasoning behind why things are done the way they are.  I also intend to provide a detailed coverage of MPLS implementations.

I have been doing MPLS for over six years now and support customer implementations that utilize a large variety of advanced MPLS features.

The class project will have 3 of the 13 lessons devoted to project time.  I will try to make myself available in the classroom on those project nights for the last half of the lesson period to answer questions and provide guidance if desired.  Attendance is not required (or even desired for that matter); I just intend to make myself available on those evenings in case someone needs assistance.

I do travel occasionally.  If I must travel, I will try to schedule it for a project evening and notify the class that I will be unavailable for assistance that night.

At the end of the class, I hope that everyone is comfortable going to the source document RFCs to obtain information about MPLS.  MPLS is very “current” and the  best information is located in RFCs, drafts, and conference proceedings.

Teaching Philosophy:

I have tried to cover lots of material in the past, but usually find that student comprehension is less when I do that.  I have also covered less material in more detail and seem to feel that fundamental understanding is better—which seems to allow for better extrapolation of advanced topics.  For this class I hope to cover basic concepts in detail and then use those as jump-off points to students understanding more advanced topics.  I hope to provide significant “learning questions” as homework to stimulate mental thought that build upon MPLS and networking fundamentals.  Note that homework questions are ungraded…they are intended to provoke thought…although I historically find that thought provoking questions are good “application-type” exam questions. 

Grading Philosophy:

Historically, about half of every class I teach gets some sort of A and half gets some sort of B.  I have had one class where almost everyone got an A, with only one B.  By and large, grading distribution works out smoothly and there are clean breaks between As and Bs—regardless of whether the grade is based upon quizzes and tests or tests and projects .  You have to try hard to not try AND not comprehend the lectures to get a C (having said that, there are people who feel it is their purpose in life to not try hard and see if I will issue a C.)  Please do not be one of these people, because I will issue a C. 

Homework Lessons and Class Problems:

I will identify which sections of the RFCs contain study material.  (If you don’t already know, reading an entire RFC is not the most scintillating thing to do in the evening).  I will also provide homework problems based on that night’s lecture that 1) correlate to the class objectives sheet that I will post and 2) will help determine the sorts of questions I ask.  I will try and make up to the first 15 minutes of each class lecture be devoted to answering the previous lecture’s homework questions.  Many of these homework problems will be previous test and quiz questions.

The optional reference is very good.  Last semester, several students found it extremely helpful.

Class Notes:

I am currently undecided on distributing .PPT format class notes.  Historically, I like to write my notes on the whiteboard…which ensures that I don’t cover material too quickly for comprehension and student note taking.  I have had bad experiences using existing powerpoint slides to cover material because I frequently feel that the pace is too quick and students cannot take reasonable notes.

Last semester I started out distributing notes, but found that the material didn’t flow the way I wanted.  Half way through the semester I started drawing network clouds on the board and just developing the pictures to correlate with the material being covered.

Class Reviews:

Last semester I changed the syllabus mid-course to do reviews of material, because I didn’t feel the class had grasped the fundamentals sufficiently.  I also provided a Saturday morning review.

Course Schedule:

Lesson #

Date

Topic

Problems

References

1

28 January

MPLS Basics: 

  1. History
  2. Basic Functionality
    1. Definitions
    2. Forwarding Plane vs Control Plane
  3. Routing overview (OSPF-ISIS/BGP)
  4. Overview of Service Provider MPLS Implementations.
    1. Traffic Engineering
    2. L3 VPN
    3. L2 VPN
    4. Converged Network

RFC 3031, RFC 3032, RFC 2702

2

4 February

Project Time—read the literature and come up with a project idea

3

11 February

 LDP Signalled LSPs:

  1. Signalling
  2. Protocol Definition

Hand-out Project Sheets

RFC 3036, RFC 3037

4

 18 February

RSVP-TE Signalled LSPs

a.       Explicit Routes

b.      Affinity Class

c.       Bandwidth

d.      Priority

e.       Hello Mechanism

RSVP-TE Detail Objects

RFC 2205, RFC 2209, RFC 2210, RFC 3209, RFC 3210

5

 25 February

Advanced LSP Calculations

  1. Inter-area TE LSP
  2. Hierarchical TE LSP

COS Overview and DiffServ-TE

  1. E-LSPs and L-LSPs
  2. Signalling and TE-Class
  3. Bandwidth Allocation Models
    1. MAM
    2. Russian Dolls

This lecture will probably be reduced to a single major topic…either topic could easily take the entire lesson…if I do teach both topics, it will be the first example of previous fundamental knowledge being used as a jumping off point for advanced topics.

6

 3 March

Mid-Term: 1.5 hours. (7:30-9:00)

Fast Reroute/BFD/Graceful Restart (9:15-10:00)

  1. 1:1 LSP Protection
  2. 1:N Link and Node Protection

RFC 4090

7

 10 March

Spring Break

8

 17 March

Layer 3 VPNs

  1. Basic L3-VPN
    1. MP-BGP extensions
    2. Extended Communities
  2. Internet Access

RFC4364, RFC 2858,  RFC 3107, RFC 2918

9

 24 March

Layer 2 VPNs

  1. Transport/Encapsulation
    1. Ethernet/VLAN
    2. PPP
    3. Other (if time)
  2. Signalling
    1. P2P

                                                               i.      Martini (LDP)

                                                             ii.      Kompella (BGP)

    1. Broadcast

                                                               i.      VPLS-LDP

                                                             ii.      VPLS-BGP

10

 31 April

L2 VPNs, continued

11

 7 April

Project Time

12

 14 April

Advanced L3 VPNs

  1. Hub and Spoke
  2. Carrier of Carriers
  3. Interprovider VPNs,

13

28 April

Multicast VPN

  1. Signaling
    1. Rosen Draft/MDT
    2. Embedded within BGP
  2. Transport
    1. Rosen GRE
    2. P:MP LSPs

IPv6 VPN

  1. IPv6 islands within IPv4
  2. Native IPv6

14

 5 May

Advanced/Future/other Topics

  1. GMPLS
  2. PBT
  3. Network Management

Final Exam

12 May

Comprehensive

Course Grading:

Mid-Term: 30%

Project: 35%

Final Exam: 35%

Exams MUST be taken in the large size GMU blue exam books (available at the bookstore).  Please do not forget; the instructor will not have extras.

For exams there will be general knowledge questions and application/integration of knowledge questions.  The test will be split about 50:50.  There will be one or two big application questions and several smaller ones. 

Course Learning Objectives:

MPLS Objectives I will forward a revised objectives sheet.  Additionally, I hope to have examples of questions that demonstrate the sorts of things I think are relevant for specific objectives.

Textbook: 

I am recommending the MPLS Applications book by Ina Minei and Julian Lucek (both of Juniper Networks) as a supplemental text.  I have worked with Ina before and she is very sharp.  She has as good a handle on advanced concepts as anyone can have.

Office Hours: 

By Appointment

Sample Test and Other References:

Test

Gmu-1.zip containing ASCII outputs of RSVP packets

Supplemental References:

I intend to update these references to include more recent information, but these should do for starters.  I highly recommend the mplsrc.com site. 

IETF RFCs and Drafts

http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-katz-yeung-ospf-traffic-06.txt--Traffic Engineering Extensions to OSPF

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3031.txt?number=3031--Multiprotocol Label Switching Architecture

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3032.txt?number=3032--MPLS Label Stack Encoding

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3035.txt?number=3035--MPLS using LDP and ATM VC Switching

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3036.txt?number=3036--LDP Specification

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3209.txt?number=3209--RSVP-TE: Extensions to RSVP for LSP Tunnels

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3210.txt?number=3210--Applicability Statement for Extensions to RSVP for LSP-Tunnels

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3270.txt?number=3270--Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) Support of Differentiated Services

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2209.txt?number=2209--Resource ReSerVation Protocol (RSVP) --Version 1 Message Processing Rules

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2208.txt?number=2208--Resource ReSerVation Protocol (RSVP) Version 1 Applicability Statement Some Guidelines on Deployment

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2205.txt?number=2205--Resource ReSerVation Protocol (RSVP) --Version 1 Functional Specification

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2211.txt?number=2211--Specification of the Controlled-Load Network Element Service

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2961.txt?number=2961--RSVP Refresh Overhead Reduction Extensions

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2996.txt?number=2996--Format of the RSVP DCLASS Object

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2370.txt?number=2370--The OSPF Opaque LSA Option

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2328.txt?number=2328--OSPF Version 2

http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-rosen-ppvpn-2547bis-protocol-01.txt

http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-ppvpn-rfc2547bis-02.txt--BGP/MPLS VPNs draft-ietf-ppvpn-rfc2547bis-02.txt

http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-kompella-ppvpn-l2vpn-02.txt--Layer 2 VPNs Over Tunnels draft-kompella-ppvpn-l2vpn-02.txt

http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ouldbrahim-ppvpn-gid-01.txt--Global Unique Identifiers (GID) draft-ouldbrahim-ppvpn-gid-01.txt

http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-lasserre-vkompella-ppvpn-vpls-02.txt--Virtual Private LAN Services over MPLS draft-lasserre-vkompella-ppvpn-vpls-02.txt

http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-martini-l2circuit-trans-mpls-10.txt--Transport of Layer 2 Frames Over MPLS-draft-martini-l2circuit-trans-mpls-10.txt

http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-martini-l2circuit-encap-mpls-04.txt--Encapsulation Methods for Transport of Layer 2 Frames Over IP and MPLS Networks-draft-martini-l2circuit-encap-mpls-04.txt

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3107.txt?number=3107--Carrying Label Information in BGP-4

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2858.txt?number=2858--Multiprotocol Extensions for BGP-4

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3037.txt?number=3037-- LDP Applicability

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2918.txt?number=2918-- Route Refresh Capability for BGP-4

IEEE Articles

Generalized Multiprotocol Label Switching: An Overview of Routing and Management Enhancements---ieee

http://mutex.gmu.edu:2086/iel5/35/19351/00894389.pdf?isNumber=19351&prod=JNL&arnumber=894389&arSt=144&ared=150&arAuthor=Banerjee%2C+A.%3B+Drake%2C+J.%3B+Lang%2C+J.P.%3B+Turner%2C+B.%3B+Kompella%2C+K.%3B+Rekhter%2C+Y.

Multiprotocol Lambda Switching: Combining MPLS Traffic Engineering Control with Optical Crossconnects

http://mutex.gmu.edu:2086/iel5/35/19642/00910598.pdf?isNumber=19642&prod=JNL&arnumber=910598&arSt=111&ared=116&arAuthor=Awduche%2C+D.%3B+Rekhter%2C+Y.

Vendor White Papers:

Juniper Networks:

http://www.juniper.net/techcenter/techpapers/200014.pdf--RFC 2547bis: BGP/MPLS VPN Hierarchical and Recursive Applications

http://www.juniper.net/techcenter/techpapers/200012.pdf--RFC 2547bis: BGP/MPLS VPN Fundamentals

http://www.juniper.net/techcenter/techpapers/200006.pdf--RSVP Signaling Extensions for MPLS Traffic Engineering

http://www.juniper.net/techcenter/techpapers/200026.pdf--Migration Strategies for IP Service Growth: Cell-switched MPLS or IP-routed MPLS , Appendix I: Cell-switched MPLS Operational Model

Cisco Systems:

http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/cc/pd/iosw/prodlit/mwglp_wp.htm--Advanced Topics in MPLS-TE Deployment

MPLS Web Sites:

http://www.mplsrc.com/

http://www.mplsrc.com/standards.shtml

Books…mpls network mngt (nadaeu)

Rehktor (MPLS)

Grey (MPLS)

Etc…

RFC listing…