Configuration of the epipe/l2circuit on the Nokia 7750 SR/7250 IXR

Epipe Configuration on Nokia 7750 SR

This article explains how to configure epipe between Nokia SR routers.

The Cisco term is referred to as xconnect and the juniper term is L2circuit.

Basic Theories:

Epipe name itself identifies it's a point-to-point connection that uses Ethernet encapsulation to pass data bits/bytes between two endpoints. Service provider core act as a layer 2 switch for customer traffic. In other words, this helps to extend the IP segment of the same subnet shared between 2 different locations.

Topology:

ISIS Level 2 and LDP are preconfigured. let's explore the setup to configure epipe and initiate traffic between the 2 sites.

LDP is used to signal the Service label between end nodes participating in epipe.

Nokia: SAP-MTU and Service MTU play an important role.

To bring up the epipe between 2 end nodes we need to take care of Service-MTU and Sap port MTU.

SAP-port MTU and Service MTU should be the same if the encapsulation is null.

If the encapsulation is dot1q or q-in-q then we need Sap-MTU to be greater than Service-MTU because dot1q adds 4 bytes of vlan and q-in-q adds 8 bytes of vlan to the service.

VC-ID should match between 2 endpoints otherwise epipe will not come up. Always make sure Virtual-Circuit Identifier is the same on both ends.

PE01: 1.0.0.1/32

PE02: 2.0.0.1/32

PE01:

ISIS Adjacency is Up between PE01 and PE02

As mentioned above we are going to use LDP as a transport/Signalling protocol. let's verify LDP status.

First, we need to configure SAP port encapsulation towards Site1 and Site2.

I am not going to configure any encapsulation on the SAP port and leave it as default for this testing.

In Nokia, We need to configure SDP to remote PE system IP to use LDP for signaling service labels.

PE01:

/configure service sdp 1000 create

/configure service sdp 1000 far-end 2.0.0.1 ==> remote PE02 SYSTEM IP

/configure service sdp 1000 ldp

PE02:

/configure service sdp 1000 create

/configure service sdp 1000 far-end 1.0.0.1 ==> remote PE01 SYSTEM IP

/configure service sdp 1000 ldp

We can see that SDP is up between the PE routers and using TLDP signaling.

Before stepping into epipe configuration let's verify the SAP  Port configuration towards the Customer Site.

SAP Port configuration on PE01 and PE02

/configure port 1/1/2 ethernet mode access

/configure port 1/1/2 no shutdown

Now we are good to start the epipe configuration and prerequisites are verified

PE01:

/configure service customer 1000 create

/configure service customer description "nokia-site1"

/configure service epipe 1000 customer 1000 create

/configure service epipe 1000 sap 1/1/2 create

/configure service epipe 1000 spoke-sdp 100:1000 create  ==> 100 is your SDP ID and 1000 is VC-ID

/configure service epipe 1000 no shutdown

PE02

/configure service customer 1000 create

/configure service customer description "nokia-site2"

/configure service epipe 1000 customer 1000 create

/configure service epipe 1000 sap 1/1/2 create

/configure service epipe 1000 spoke-sdp 100:1000 create 

/configure service epipe 1000 no shutdown

The configuration is done on both routers. let's verify the epipe status and pass the traffic between 2 sites to verify end to end Circuit is up.

Local/Remote Service-MTU and VC-ID shared using TLDP between PE routers.

LMTU/RMTU - Local/Remote MTU

VC-ID - 1000

Ingress/Egress Label-524283U/524283S

As per the below output, Service MTU and Service Label are shared between both PE nodes. 

Service-MTU and SAP-MTU are the same because we are not using any encapsulation on SAP Port. Epipe is up and running between PE1 and PE2.

Final Verification using the ping between Sites.

Site1: 192.168.0.1/24

Site2: 192.168.0.2/24

SITE-1# ping router 192.168.1.2 rapid count 10 

PING 192.168.1.2 56 data bytes

!!!!!!!!!!

---- 192.168.1.2 PING Statistics ----

10 packets transmitted, 10 packets received, 0.00% packet loss

round-trip min = 0.084ms, avg = 0.610ms, max = 1.26ms, stddev = 0.323ms