Juniper MX Series

Case Study

The best way to apply the concepts in this chapter is to create a case study that integrates many of the MC-LAG features in a real-world scenario. Using the book’s laboratory topology, it’s possible to create a two pairs of PE routers and CE routers, as illustrated in Figure 8-12.

Figure 8-12. MC-LAG Case Study Topology.

This case study will create two pairs of MC-LAG routers and two pairs of switches:

MC-LAG-1

Routers R1 and R2 will be in the active-active mode. These are MX240 routers acting as the PE nodes.

MC-LAG-2

Routers R3 and R4 will be in the active-standby mode. These are MX240 routers acting as the PE nodes.

Switch Pair 1

Switches S1 and S2 will be running vanilla IEEE 802.3ad and IEEE 802.1Q. These are EX4500s acting as the CE nodes.

Switch Pair 2

Switches S3 and S4 will be running vanilla IEEE 802.3ad and IEEE 802.1Q. These are EX4200s acting as the CE nodes.

On the far left and right are switches S1 through S4. These switches are acting as vanilla CE devices connecting into their own MC-LAG instance. From the vantage point of each CE switch, it believes that it has a single IEEE 802.3ad connection going into the core of the topology. To mix things up, each MC-LAG instance will operate in a different mode. The MC-LAG instance for S1 and S2 will be active-active, whereas the MC-LAG instance for S3 and S4 will be active-standby.

This case study will move through all the ...