Test engineers first constructed the backbone network. All test cases required RSVP-TE or LDP signalling for MPLS transport and dynamic routing in the backbone using OSPF with traffic enginering extensions.
Ethernet Point-to-Point VPNs (Pseudowires) Point-to-point Ethernet VPN Services over MPLS were tested using the MPLS & Frame Relay Alliance test methodology defined in the test plan mpls2003.091.03. The tests covered:
- Label binding and distribution for Ethernet pseudowires via targeted LDP sessions between the provider edge routers
- Data encapsulation of Ethernet and tagged Ethernet frames
- Transfer of Ethernet traffic from many emulated end stations (up to 8,000) and via many tunnels running in parallel inside one targeted LDP session (up to 2,000)
- Circuit emulation over Ethernet pseudowires was also tested.
Hierarchical VPLS (H-VPLS) Since VPLS is basically a multipoint extension of point-to-point Ethernet pseudowire links, point-to-point evaluation tests provided a prerequisite for the VPLS tests. They were carried out in accordance to draft-ietf-l2vpn-vpls-ldp-05, using the MFA test plan mpls2003.092.03 (recently extended for H-VPLS scalability).
- VPLS service establishment by label exchange between provider edge routers
- Hierarchical VPLS service establishment for provider edge (PE-RS) VPLS switches
- Hierarchical VPLS configuration for multi-tenant unit (MTU) VPLS switches
- Scalability tests with up to 50 VPLS instances in parallel on each PE-RS and MTU
- Scalability tests with up to 25 PE-RS (most of them emulated) connected full-mesh for all the instances mentioned above
- Scalability tests with up to 4,000 MAC addresses in total
Vendors supporting H-VPLS could be either the provider edge (PE) or the multi-tenant unit (MTU) device while participating in the test.
LSP Ping and Traceroute LSP ping was tested according to draft-ietf-mpls-lsp-ping-07.txt and MFA test plan mpls2004.091.00. Tests involved sending MPLS echo request packets from one label edge router to another, and receiving MPLS echo reply packets from the remote end. This verified connectivity as well as congruence between the data plane and the control plane.
LSP traceroute was verified according to draft-ietf-mpls-lsp-ping-07, involving each device as an active initiator and a responder of traceroute commands.
