Routing to remote sites via MPLS

[tylerlucas]

We currently have several remote sites connected via T1's over a hosted MPLS cloud.

Our head-end router currently has static routes to each remote LAN subnet, which point to the MPLS cloud. 

The static routes work fine - but what other options are there with dynamic routing? I'm thinking that it would make more sense to have a routing protocol running in the future, would I need to be using BGP?

[Mahesh Gohil]

Hello,

There are many options available. You can use eigrp/ospf or bgp. But it depends upon agreement with

your service provider.

As much as I aware ISP prefer to have BGP as routing protocol with customers. The reason could be challenges with eigrp and ospf especially

when customer is connected to two different ISP.

In my view BGP is better choice, though the timers are not that sensitive but it is very robust protocol and you can achieve anything

by playing with diferent bgp attributes.

Hope this helps

Regards

Mahesh

[Jigar Dave]

Hello Tyler,

I believe you have only one service provider present in your current scenario.

yes it is possible to use BGP but for that you need to get services from two different service providers (ISP), need to perform following steps to make this happen.

1. for each remote site you need to have two ISP present
2. you need two separate router on which ISP is connected, one L3 switch connects these two routes on its Gig interface and other Access L2 Switches are connected with L3's as Trunk ports, you can create VLAN as per your design/requirement on L3 and can do intervlan routing.
3. you can use iBGP to connect two routers for redundency purpose
4. you can route your internal subnets divided between two ISP to get to Head-End ( HUB Site)
5. at Head-End site, you need to define all subnets present in remote site.
6. you can remove static routes and can advertise your subnets from both the ends ( Remote site and Hub site)
7. you need to buy AS no. from each service provider
8. you can use Private AS no.s ( 64512 till 65535) for iBGP connection.

Hope this helps

- Jigar Dave

[Giuseppe Larosa]

Hello Jigar,

>> yes it is possible to use BGP but for that you need to get services from two different service providers (ISP)

Well, this is not true you can move to use eBGP even if all sites are served by a single MPLS SP . I guess  you were thinking of   multihoming to the public internet, that is a different matter then interconnecting multiple sites as should be for the original poster.

What is important to note is that MPLS L3 VPN uses a peer model and the HQ router will peer with the near PE node, rather then having sessions with all the remote sites.

So moving to BGP or any other routing protocol requires cooperation with SP

Hope to help

Giuseppe