Primary on MPLS Network + Backup on Internet BB

Pain Area and aspects for consideration:

• If Last mile goes down frequently?
• MPLS Backbone issues with one Service Provider?
• Will it be a cost effective solution?
• Up to what level of redundancy?
• Where is the Single point of Failure?
• Will it be manual intervention?
• What Routing protocol needs to be run between CE-PE?
• What would the default-gateway IP address?
• How many ports required to connecting 2 Service Provider in 2 CPE’s?

Solution Proposed

This solution is for those MPLS customer who are running MPLS Network from one Service provider and wanted to have a cost effective solution for backup of their primary MPLS Circuit. In this scenario take MPLS connectivity from one Service provider and take braodband connectivity from other service provider which will be terminated on single CPE.Since most of failure happens at Last mile end of the Service Provider or CPE end which leads to high down time and less availability of the mission critical sites which affects business processes. One of the best ways to reduce down time is to have Internet leased connectivity from secondary services in every Spoke location and take Internet Leased connectivity at Main (HUB) location which will work as active-failover mode. Main location should have bigger Internet bandwidth because if n no of MPLS spokes goes down in that case traffics comes through Broad Band connections and will aggregate in Main location. CPE’s will be at spoke locations should have ADSL port onto to their Router to terminate BB connection and should Public Static IP in every location from BB service provider if wanted to configure IPSEC/GRE Tunnel for better security. Recommendation is to run eBGP as a Routing protocol between CE-PE at WAN Side, the WAN router will be tracking the Internet Gateway. If the internet gateway goes down, then the routers forward the traffic towards ADSL modem and provide the link redundancy.

Technical Arrangement:

1. Internet Leased Line will be terminated on separate CE Router at Main location.
2. Internet Broadband will be terminated on same CE Router at rest of the locations.
3. Customer can implement this setup either on HUB and Spoke or Mesh Topology.
4. Recommendation is to run eBGP routing on CE-PE on MPLS Network.
5. Tracking command has to configure at MPLS-HUB location to track the MPLS-Spoke location.
6. Spoke Routers should have 1 Layer3 port + 1 ADSL ports.
7. Defaults Gateway IP address will be MPLS LAN Interface.
8. Configure static route with the higher AD towards ADSL interface.
9. Routers should support all the Routing protocol along with tracking command.