MPLS VPN Configuration

Today, my task was to implement MPLS VPN configurations, Configure Voice and Allow other traffic through normal VPN. Upon further research on MPLS VPN, it was confirmed that the VPN tunnel for MPLS gets activated from the ISP's PE router (Provider's Edge Router) therefore majority of your VPN traffic gets controlled by the ISP. Some typical disadvantages are listen below:

• Your routing protocol choice might be limited.
• Your end-to-end convergence is controlled primarily by the service provider.
• The reliability of your L3 MPLS VPN is influenced by the service provider's competence level.
• Deciding to use MPLS VPN services from a particular service provider also creates a very significant lock-in. It’s hard to change the provider when it’s operating your network core.

Considering security, i'd prefer having the core Control of my traffic In-house therefore every other traffic will now continue to run through the core MPLS Switching path except Voice which will be routed from CE Router (Customer Edge Router) to the end destination.

It took a while to try and figure out the basic principles of MPLS VPN and its configurations and then trying to apply them to the main-project implementation frame. After the above mentioned finding, i will now have to change the VPN plan to traffigate Voice traffic from the CE router on each ends instead of passing it through the MPLS Core.

Next Phase: 

- Configure Voice calls site to site and within sites

- Apply voice traffic through VPN (configure VPN using CCP)

- Test voice-quality scoring and performance

Ref:

(Retrieved from:  http://searchenterprisewan.techtarget.com/guides/MPLS-VPN-fundamentals, Open at 7:30pm, Sunday - 7th September, 2014)