Hi Guys

Since MPLS is between L2 and L3, should I be able to torch the traffic from winbox?

thanks

You should see MPLS packets in torch - ethernet protocol used by MPLS is 0x8847. Of course, torch will not interpret packets any further (will not look for e.g. IP headers and such).

Thanks again mplsguy

Lets say I have a wireless network and all the highsites are doing mpls packet switching ( no VPLS ), am I able to setup queues for qos? ie with mangle rules in firewall

I understand that MPLS is compatible with WMM, but if the links reach capacity then WMM is pretty useless. correct me if i'm wrong?

Lets say I have a wireless network and all the highsites are doing mpls packet switching ( no VPLS ), am I able to setup queues for qos? ie with mangle rules in firewall

MPLS switching bypasses any firewall rules, therefore you can not use mangle. It actually is not even possible, because MPLS switching router "does not know" what protocol data is carried in MPLS packet. General idea of MPLS switching is to move packets across network core as fast as possible. You should design your network so that QoS policy is applied on MPLS cloud ingress - e.g. if you must limit rate of some flow, you should do it as close to the source of flow as possible and before entering MPLS switched core.

I understand that MPLS is compatible with WMM, but if the links reach capacity then WMM is pretty useless. correct me if i'm wrong?

Depends on what you mean by "pretty useless". If the links are at their capacity limit, of course performance will also degrade for higher WMM priority flows, but still higher priority traffic will get "better" treatment according to EDCF rules. Currently WMM is the only feature in RouterOS that can do any QoS on MPLS switched traffic. Implementing queues that would classify packets based on priority in MPLS label exp field or VLAN priority field is on todo list, but I can not comment on when that will be available. Probably the more demand for such feature, the sooner it will be implemented.

Lets say I have a wireless network and all the highsites are doing mpls packet switching ( no VPLS ), am I able to setup queues for qos? ie with mangle rules in firewall

MPLS switching bypasses any firewall rules, therefore you can not use mangle. It actually is not even possible, because MPLS switching router "does not know" what protocol data is carried in MPLS packet. General idea of MPLS switching is to move packets across network core as fast as possible. You should design your network so that QoS policy is applied on MPLS cloud ingress - e.g. if you must limit rate of some flow, you should do it as close to the source of flow as possible and before entering MPLS switched core.

Thats all very easy if the network has a single ingress and eggress point. But when there are multiple ingress and multiple egree points ( multiple WAN connections at different locations) then things get messy and it is sometimes impossible to limit traffic at just the ingress points.

Implementing queues that would classify packets based on priority in MPLS label exp field or VLAN priority field is on todo list, but I can not comment on when that will be available. Probably the more demand for such feature, the sooner it will be implemented.

Where can I vote for this?