Switches for VPLS CE`s

[Lee Smitherman]

Hi All,

Would like to see if anyone has also had experience with the setup I am looking to deploy.  We currently have an MPLS connected WAN to six sites and at the Edge(CE) we use Routers.   

Moving forward we plan to migrate(install at each site new) to new VPLS circuits giving us layer 2 connectivity and using OSPF at the core(area 0) and ospf at each site(area X).  Each site does have 3850 switches at the distribution layer.  Each VPLS circuit is going to be between 500Mbits to 1Gbit so in our current model would need ISR 4451`s or 4431`s.  All these ISR routers are going to be doing is switching packers, running OSPF,  a little netflow and thats it.

Is there any reason I cannot collapse this functionality down to the distribution layer switch on the 3850 series or soon to be 9300/9500 series.  Understand I would need to shape on the switch port going to the VPLS PE device.  This would remove the need for an extra layer of routers which will save a significant amount of Capex and opex costs.

Any thoughts, experience would be gratefully appreciated.

[Julio E. Moisa]

Hi,

You could use switches as CE to receive the data from other peers, now the VPLS Pseudowires and everything else will be made by the PE (on the ISP side), so you will connect your switch (CE) to the PE (ISP) with a trunk interface and create the specific VLANs. 

[johnny_5]

I too am planning such an upgrade with moving from ATT MPLS to ATT Layer (ASEoD). I'm curious to know how the switches worked for you the end as we are also thinking of eliminating the ISR branch routers and replacing them with newer C9000 series switches(1Gig uplinks) and running EIGRP across the flat network. How is it working today? Did you have any issues?