Interconnect Two MPLS clouds

[Larry Kuntz]

Our company recently purchased another company that has an MPLS cloud with the same carrier that we do.  We need to bridge or interconnect the two companies together at the head router to start with.  I was curious if anyone has experience with this and if so would you be willing to share how you did it?

Thanks,

LK

[Peter Paluch]

Hello Larry,

I have not personally done this. But I wonder - if you and the new company both have MPLS from the same provider and if both companies are using distinct and non-overlapping IP spaces, you can ask the provider to basically merge the MPLS clouds of these two companies. For a provider, this should be a fairly easy thing to do - allow each company's VRF to learn about routes in the other company's VRF. This would allow both companies to see each other and talk to each other, albeit via the service provider's infrastructure. I assume, though, that these two companies are not located at the same premises so you would need some kind of a WAN interconnect, anyway.

If your companies are using overlapping IP spaces then there is no quick remedy - you will need to do some renumbering.

Please feel welcome to ask further. And I would also welcome other friends and experts here to share their thoughts!

Best regards,

Peter

[milan.kulik]

Hi Larry,

I was involved in somtehing like that 3 years ago.

As I suppose you don't trust the other company network 100 percent, I'd sugest:

Connect your HQ to both MPLS VPNs via BGP.

This way you can control easily which subnets to advertise from one VPN to the other.

You can also involve NAT, FW, IPS, if necessary.

And you can move particular sites to your company VPN after checking the site is compatible with your network standards.

HTH,

Milan