The MPLS-OPS Archive

[Yinglam Cheung <rcheung@houston.sns.slb.com>]

Chris,
I can't find any info about "universal VPN" or "L2TPv3" from CCO. I find the
UTI info in 12.0S and 12.0ST IOS releases but it doesn't give much
background info.
Does "AToM" stand for "Any Transport over MPLS" or just for ATM ("ATM over
MPLS")? Is FR also supported? The doc I got from CCO is always based on ATM
only, never mentions a word about other layer2 technologies like FR. The way
to do ATM and Ethernet are also quite different. EoMPLS doesn't require you
to configure a tunnel but using keyword "l2ptransport" while AToM does. So
that's why I'm guessing AToM doesn't apply to any transport though I heard
this since last year.
So I guess UTI can generally replace GRE tunnels, what benefits from UTI?
well, I think all answers depend on the info I'm looking for.
Appreciate if you can find out some info regarding to UTI or L2TPv3. (like
what's new in L2TPv3 comparing to v2, etc).


best regards,
Yinglam (Raymond) Cheung
Double CCIE #6961
Senior Network Engineer
Schlumberger Network Infrastructure Solutions
Tel: 1 (713) 513-3285
Cell:1 (832) 274-0126

-----Original Message-----
From: Christopher Lewis [mailto:chrlewis@cisco.com]
Sent: Friday, August 02, 2002 12:21 PM
To: rcheung@houston.sns.slb.com
Cc: MPLS Mailing List
Subject: Re: [MPLS-OPS]: UTI (Universal Transport Interface)


Raymond,

There should be material on Cisco's website under the title of "universal
VPNs" which will give the marketing positioning of these two technologies.

I'll give you the standard Cisco answers to these questions.

What IETF draft is UTI based on?
UTI is the Cisco proprietary pre-standard implementation of L2TPv3, as such
you won't see a draft on it. There are plenty of L2TPv3 drafts for you to
find on the IETF website. There is very little difference between UTI and
L2TPv3 though.

Why Cisco has all similar technologies on the market?
Good question. Cisco wants to remain the number one supplier of networking
equipment, as such, it cannot offer just one solution to a problem, as no
one solution appeals to all customers.

Does anyone has a list of pros and cons of Cisco's UTI as compared to
EoMPLS or AToM? What IETF draft is UTI based on?
Well, first EoMPLS is part of AToM. AToM is about transporting any layer 2
frame over an MPLS network, as such, ethernet is one of those layer 2
technologies transported. Next, UTI/L2TPv3 is for transport of layer 2
frames over IP cores, whereas AToM is there for layer 2 transport over MPLS
cores. UTI/L2TPv3 provides the same sort of functionality as AToM, but a
customer does not have to implement MPLS in their network if they chose not
to upgrade software on their core routers (in either case, upgrading the
edge routers are of course necessary). UTI/L2TPv3 was created based off
customer demand for this functionality.
So there is little point in listing the pros and cons, basically the
customer will decide which is better depending on whether they want MPLS in
their core or not. Currently, the majority of customers have opted to
implement MPLS for this functionality.

Hope this helps

Chris

At 07:11 PM 8/1/2002, Yinglam Cheung wrote:
>Does anyone has a list of pros and cons of Cisco's UTI as compared to
EoMPLS
>or AToM? What IETF draft is UTI based on? Why Cisco has all similar
>technoloies on the market?
>I tried the example on CCO document and it doesn't work (while using EoMPLS
>it works). Does UTI have any debug commands (other than "debug tunnel") to
>troubleshoot?
>
>best regards,
>Yinglam (Raymond) Cheung
>Double CCIE #6961
>Senior Network Engineer
>Schlumberger Network Infrastructure Solutions
>Tel: 1 (713) 513-3285
>Cell:1 (832) 274-0126
>
>-------
>The MPLS-OPS Mailing List
>Subscribe/Unsubscribe:  http://www.mplsrc.com/mplsops.shtml
>Archive: http://www.mplsrc.com/mpls-ops_archive.shtml

-------
The MPLS-OPS Mailing List
Subscribe/Unsubscribe:  http://www.mplsrc.com/mplsops.shtml
Archive: http://www.mplsrc.com/mpls-ops_archive.shtml