EoiP or MPLS for layer 2 Trasport over network

RouterOS Forwarding Protocols
1

Hello,

I’ve been reading through several of the topics on the forum but haven’t found anything quite geared for what I am looking for.

A company has asked us (a WISP using all MK) to give them layer 2 transport between two of their rural locations and their fiber WAN. We have never done anything like this, it would only be traversing over 2 of our routers to get each location “bridged” to their Fiber WAN. We are a completely routed network using OSPF, licensed BH’s etc. What is my best option for accomplishing this task?
Would MPLS allow me to stretch a vlan accross 2 routers? I don’t currently use MPLS, and I don’t want to implement it just for one customer unless it’s simply the best way to go. Do I have to use MPLS for my entire network? Or can I enable it only on the two routers that would need it? Would using EoiP bridged with the ethernet port they are connected into be sufficient for this task or is the overhead terrible? Is there an option I have not considered?

If MPLS is the best way to go, then I am willing to go that route. Currently we have no Backbone area0, it’s all on area 11 because of someone before me. I’ve always meant to set it all back to area0 but have never ran into anything that required it. Would this be an issue when using MPLS? Would I have to convert everything to area0? When migrating a network to MPLS, I imagine you start with the outer most routers and work your upstream. Is this correct? Can this be done without any downtime or does each router configured lose connection until you get to the head router where it ties everything together and it all comes back up? Does MPLS slow down OSPF convergence time if a link goes down and it has to use a backup path?

Thanks very much in advance!

2

For just one customer it doesn’t make sense to deploy an mpls backbone.
Mpls works on top of an existing structure with l2 links and existing routing.
That said, I think mpls is worthwhile for any sp. Just test it in the lab first. Metarouter is an excellent tool for that.

3

Thanks for the reply, I’ve been doing more reading on this topic and I think I will move to an mpls backbone in the future, though for now I will use the EoIP tunnel.

As far as migrating to an MPLS Backbone, is there a way to do it smoothly with minimal or no down time?

4

With EoIP you have poor bandwidth capacity!

In my opinion best solution is a VPLS over MPLS to connect directly (psedowire) rural site to core WAN.

5

Take a look at this MUM presentation, http://mum.mikrotik.com/presentations/US09/megis_mpls.pdf

Converting from routed to MPLS should not cause any downtime.