CCIE PPP over Frame-Relay

first I would like to start by explaining why we need it and how it is going to take our simple frame-relay to another level of connection, as we all know Frame-Relay is Layer 2 Technology design to reduce wide band use by sharing connections and grunting or not grunting link speed, today as you probably know the frame-relay has become obsolete by other technology's such like ADSL, Cable, Metro Ethernet and others.

ppp (point to point protocol) another layer 2 protocol design to give a better solution to hdlc (high level data link control) used to control and transport ip traffic in a reliable and secure way.


now people taught how do we give the old frame-relay more features without developing a new frame-relay, they said why not take the good old ppp and join them in a "holy matrimony" just kidding, but really why not take them both and enjoy both benefits one with sharing bandwidth and traffic shaping options and one with link integrity and security features.


so now I come to our scenario where you can see I have setup 2 routers, one with 1 serial dividing it to 2 sub interfaces and the other one with 2 serial joining them together to one multilink interface making them load balance packets and also secure using chap authentication.
the multilink is needed here only to enable load balancing and interleaving, you can do without but it is less efficient and way less cooler :-)

This is the show run on router 2:

!

username Rack1R1 password 0 cisco

!

!

interface Multilink1

ip address 192.168.1.2 255.255.255.0

ppp multilink

ppp multilink group 1

!

interface Serial1/0

no ip address

encapsulation frame-relay

serial restart-delay 0

no frame-relay inverse-arp

!

interface Serial1/0.203 point-to-point

frame-relay interface-dlci 203 ppp Virtual-Template1

!

interface Serial1/0.213 point-to-point

frame-relay interface-dlci 213 ppp Virtual-Template1

!

!

interface Virtual-Template1
no ip address

ppp authentication chap

ppp multilink group 1

!

that is the show run on router 1:

!
username Rack1R2 password 0 cisco
!
!
interface Multilink1
ip address 192.168.1.1 255.255.255.0
ppp multilink
ppp multilink group 1
!
interface Serial1/0
no ip address
encapsulation frame-relay
serial restart-delay 0
no frame-relay inverse-arp
!
interface Serial1/0

no ip address

encapsulation frame-relay

serial restart-delay 0

frame-relay interface-dlci 302 ppp Virtual-Template1

no frame-relay inverse-arp

!

interface Serial1/1

no ip address

encapsulation frame-relay

serial restart-delay 0

frame-relay interface-dlci 312 ppp Virtual-Template1

no frame-relay inverse-arp

!
!interface Virtual-Template1
no ip address
ppp authentication chap
ppp multilink group 1
!

Verify:

sh ppp multilink

Multilink1, bundle name is Rack1R1
.
.
.
Member links: 2 active,....
Vi1, since 07:53:31
Vi2, since 07:53:31

and good old ping:

ping 192.168.1.2

Type escape sequence to abort.

Sending 5, 100-byte ICMP Echos to 174.1.23.2, timeout is 2 seconds:
!!!!!
Success rate is 100 percent (5/5), round-trip min/avg/max = 24/82/128 ms

Warrning !!!

This is not related to the context of my blog but I would like to put here a warring against this E-Bay Seller, he sold me and others a fake Nokia N95 Model and you can see in that movie what a rip off it is! here is the link of what he sold on eBay and on the movie you can see what I received: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=160123539029&sspagename=ADME:L:RTQ:US:1 So Be Ware

MPLS BENEFITS

1) faster switching then IP as IP Forwarding is based on IP routing table search each address is 4 octets length and can cause some time to calculate 2) Core free from BGP as the MPLS is based on label switching there is no need any more for core routers to participate in the BGP network and only Edge routers need to be BGP aware. this is a huge memory and utilization saving. 3) MPLS TE Traffic Engineering is one of the major benefits as it is allowing you to have better path selections and it have a very good mechanism called FRR Fast ReRouting and this is allowing to re-route traffic from and unavailable router in a really fast speed of less then 50ms, and this is allowing us to build a stable and reliable Data and VoIP Network as you know less then 50ms loss will still keep the Voice Call Up, if it is more then that the call will be dropped. so this feature allows us in a good planed network to give us near PSTN solution. 4) MPLS VPN is another major benefit as it is reducing manageability and introducing simplicity to the client. before if the client wanted to create a VPN for his offices network he needed to either create tunnels between all his offices creating a lot of configuration and complex design when there are more then 4 branches or he needed to ask the provider to create all this VPN's and relay on his network design. but with MPLS VPN he simply need to make a Connection between his Customer Edge Router and Provider Edge Router.