Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS) Interoperability with Customer Edge (CE) Bridges

Abstract

One of the main motivations behind Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS) is its ability to provide connectivity not only among customer routers and servers/hosts but also among customer IEEE bridges. VPLS is expected to deliver the same level of service that current enterprise users are accustomed to from their own enterprise bridged networks or their Ethernet Service Providers.When customer edge (CE) devices are IEEE bridges, then there are certain issues and challenges that need to be accounted for in a VPLS network. The majority of these issues have been addressed in the IEEE 802.1ad standard for provider bridges and they can be leveraged for VPLS networks. This document extends the provider edge (PE) model described in RFC 4664 based on IEEE 802.1ad bridge module, and it illustrates a clear demarcation between the IEEE bridge module and IETF LAN emulation module. By doing so, it shows that the majority of interoperability issues with CE bridges can be delegated to the 802.1ad bridge module, thus removing the burden on the IETF LAN emulation module within a VPLS PE.