MPLS – Hub and Spoke Topology

Pain Area and aspects for consideration:

• Which Topology suits for their existing Infrastructure?
• Difference between HUB and Spoke or Mesh Topology.
• Which routing protocol between CE-PE used for their requirement.
• Low Latency.
• Security feature.
• What type of QOS is required for their application?

- Solution Proposed

In MPLS VPN this is one of the most common Topology which is used by most of the customer, specific reason is, in today’s world ever body have ERP Server at their premises and everyone wanted to access this ERP Server remotely or locally on to the WEB.  One way is to have Internet Connection at all the respective locations and access the server remotely or use MPLS as a technology where Service Provider offer VPN as services which gives you security to access the Centralized ERP Server.IN MPLS CE (Customer Edge) is further connected to Service Provider PE (Provider Edge) Router which transport the Customer packet to the rest of Customers location through MPLS Cloud which offer low latency. There are so many Routing protocols which are supported by MPLS Like-RIPv2, EIGRP, Static, OSPF and BGP. Although Static would be the most suitable protocol to be used between CE-PE if customer has limited set of LAN Routes and BGP to be used where more no of LAN routes to be advertised from CE to PE.

Every Customer has separate VRF in MPLS Cloud and all the Customer locations exchange their Routing information in that particular VRF, so any customer can use same set of IP address into their network and IP would not clash each other because of different VRF for every customer. Service provider Configure RD and RT values Export/Import into Customer VRF so that every spoke can speak to their respective HUB location.

Technical Arrangement:

1. IN HUB and Spoke – Only spokes location can communicate with their respective HUB location.
2. Configure Separate VRF for every customer in PE.
3. CE Router should have 1 Layer3 port + 1 Layer2 port.
4. CE-PE any Routing protocol supported by MPLS Technology.
5. AT HUB – HUB RT values would be export and Spoke RT will be import.
6. AT Spoke – HUB RT values would be import and Spoke RT will be Export.