04-15-2024 05:36 AM - edited 04-15-2024 05:43 AM
Hi Everyone, I'm currently in middle of a rollout of Cisco SDA across our estate incorporating Cisco DNA Center, ISE, ACI etc. Its going well :). Most of my sites are either private fiber or leased circuits which have been migrated to Cisco without an issue. Most are small so all setup as FIAB connecting back via the private fibre / Leased line to the Fusion Node (Backbone Router). I do however have some sites that connect via Wireless P2P bridges these all terminate currently onto a Layer 2 switch acting as a media convertor so basically just passing the VLANs up to the backbone router for connectivity. Below (Diagram A) shows current setup will I be able to keep the layer 2 switch acting as a media convertor in place and just pass all the required underlay/overlay VLANs from each sites FIAB through it back to the Fusion Router for handoff or will this not work? My other thought (Diagram B) is to swapout the layer 2 switch for something like a C9500 and set it up as a another Fusion router so each link can directly handoff from the FIAB on each site.. i guess another possibility (Diagram C) is to setup a C9500 as the BN/CP with each connecting Edge setup within a fabric zone for each site.. any best practice recommendations would be great. Thanks
Diagram A
Diagram A
Diagram B
Diagram B
Diagram C
Diagram C
04-15-2024 07:44 AM
Cisco CX services labbed diagram 3 as a PoC in our account. In the lab it's single connection though.
All options are liveable. It's for u to decide by considering all cons&pros
04-15-2024 04:03 PM - edited 04-15-2024 04:06 PM
Routing generally better than switching, but you can keep the "Layer 2 Switch Media Converter" if you must. SDA overlay does not care what the underlay platforms and technologies (e.g. wifi bridge) are, as long as the underlay meets the fundamental SDA overlay requirements. This means transport MTU needs to solve for potentially large VXLAN with DF bit set, and PIM/multicast might be needed in underlay for overlay layer 2 flooding and/or native multicast routing. So will it work? Answer: maybe, it depends on capabilities of the wifi bridging devices and the overlay MTU and multicast requirements, which in turn depends on how the overlays are configured (L2F, native/HER multicast routing, adjust MSS, PMTUD, etc). That said, yes other people have done this successfully, noting that the particular design details matter, cannot give a rubber stamp without understanding the specifics. Best regards, Jerome
04-16-2024 09:20 AM
Thanks @jedolphi @andy!doesnt!like!uucp for your comments and advice, its appreciated. Some of the wireless bridges are dated (Motorola 54500)so a bit of a concern as features and configurable options are limited, but I do have the facilities to fully test before putting into production, will put together a test initially using the switch acting as media convertor first to test if that will work. Then take it from there. Thanks again.
10-30-2024 08:57 AM
I know this is an old post however, I'll add my two cents anyways for whatever it is worth. When I first started down the SDA journey 2yrs ago Cisco TAC flat out told me that wireless PtP links were not supported with SDA and consequently they wouldn't help with this deployment type at all. However, that answer was not good enough for me as I have multiple small FIAB deployment sites where our only option was wireless PtP links. My design at these sites was similar to your option C deployment, as the FIAB Border device is located at our ISP Dmarc location and the sites had multiple small outbuildings for specific user functions, installing fiber/cat cable between these buildings is/was extremely cost prohibitive when you are talking about 2-3 computers and a wireless AP with a few clients. To make this work:
Your PtP wireless bridge devices have to support MTU adjustments above 1500, we were using Ubiquiti Nanostation AC devices for this, and they will support an MTU up to the max RFC MTU ~2400 for wireless (Ubiquiti does not recommend this either but, it does work) at these locations we ended up settling on a 2000 MTU for the entire fabric site and was a balance between SDA requirements and wireless packet size, this all has to be manually configured (Note we do not use any lan automation at these sites either due to the fact that it does very little for initial border deployment and we only had a need for 1-2 Edge switches at the sites we use base deployment templates for all of these devices and manually install/configure the base before shipment. Once the devices are online and connected we then push the fabric config to the devices.
Another thing to consider is that true SDA only uses routed links on the Edge nodes however, regardless of what Cisco says we have multiple devices we have to support that just will not work in the SDA environment be it DHCP delays or non RFC spec controllers etc... so we ended up configuring our underlay on the switches connected to an SVI and having ISIS configured on the SVI for overlay routing and we are passing L2 VLANs in the underlay beneath the overlay at the same time. Yes, this does not solve the STP problem however, if STP is done properly with no redundant links it can be controlled. In practice this has not broken anything but, does prevent CatCtr/DNAC from being able to act as advertised.
That said, this does not align with any of the Cisco CVDs and is likely not supported by TAC if you have any issues. I would not recommend attempting the deployment I described without fully understanding the underlay/overlay relationship. However, I can say that it can be made to work and support your needs. Good internal documentation and training whomever is maintaining this environment is required.
To be honest, I really like the features of SDA for 90% of things however, for my current needs it is not 100% viable rip and replace solution with no native L2 support (L2 handoffs and flooding) have not resolved the issues with these devices nor have the addressed supporting the 10% of devices that are required. Cisco really needs to make sure that people understand that not everything in the world works with a true SDA only network before they sell it to them.
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