Advanced VPLS, or ‘Cisco’s enhancements to its standards-compliant VPLS’

How many CLI commands will you need to enable VPLS? You will be pleasantly surprised. But before that, a bit of historical context:

Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS) -- a layer 2 VPN technology providing Ethernet connectivity over packet-switched WANs, supports the connection of multiple sites in a single broadcast domain over a managed IP/MPLS network. By presenting an Ethernet interface, VPLS simplifies the LAN-WAN boundary for enterprises and enables rapid and flexible service provisioning.

Now Cisco’s Advanced VPLS (A-VPLS) adds several innovations to these table-stake benefits, advancing the VPLS technology frontier:

1. Smarter use of WAN bandwidth: Let’s face it, traffic flows across data centers are bound to be large volume. Cisco A-VPLS can intelligently load-balance traffic flows among different paths across the edge and core, utilizing all available WAN bandwidth.

2. Enhanced simplicity: All the above including turning on VPLS, takes just 11 simple CLI commands.

3. Enhanced resiliency: With smart load balancing and Catalyst 6500 Virtual Switching System (VSS) providing high availability, A-VPLS facilitates recovery from service interruptions in sub-second range.

To learn more, I recommend some quick reads:

• A-VPLS video explanation: www.cisco.com/go/dci
• Where does A-VPLS fit in the grand scheme of Data Center Interconnect (DCI): http://www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/collateral/ns340/ns517/ns224/ns949/ns304/ns975/at_a_glance_c45-493703.pdf  
• Simple CLI commands: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/collateral/ns340/ns517/ns224/ns949/ns304/ns975/product_bulletin_c25-602184.html

Feng