Cisco's IOS-XE and PCEP implementation

Mohamed Kamal mkamal at noor.net
Sun Apr 5 19:42:46 UTC 2015


> and hence being implemented on IOS-XR within the Cisco environment today

I disagree! .. Engineering is all about optimization, and using an ASR1k
(which is being marketed as an "edge/PE router") in my edge doesn't mean
that my network is not a "high-scale environment", it does mean that it
fits my needs in this location, where other IOS-XR (ASR9k) fits in others.

Plus, PCEP is no magic, Juniper's MX series starting from the vMX is
supporting PCEP. They didn't claim that, a "higher-scale environment" is
being required for this.

> the demand for online calculation has increased - either due to dependencies for new TE path-instantiating protocols (e.g., SR), or more complex constraints that cannot be well met by offline calculation or CSPF

That's why PCEP support should be added to the road-map in the near future.

Mohamed Kamal
Core Network Sr. Engineer

On 4/5/2015 8:33 PM, Rob Shakir wrote:
> On 30 March 2015 at 15:42:59, Mohamed Kamal (mkamal at noor.net) wrote:
>> I'm wondering, why there is no MPLS-TE PCE support for IOS-XE till now?!
>>  
>> Should I be getting a 9k/CRS on the edge to implement an automatic tool
>> to build MPLS-TE tunnels!
> In general, PCE(P) implementations have been limited. IMHO the last 10 years of RSVP-TE management has generally been done with auto-mesh tools, or in-house driven offline path calculation tools (e.g., WANDL, Cariden, Aria…). 
>
> As such, the demand for online calculation has increased - either due to dependencies for new TE path-instantiating protocols (e.g., SR), or more complex constraints that cannot be well met by offline calculation or CSPF (e.g., path-diversity with disjoint head-end PEs). This demand is mainly coming in higher-scale environments - and hence being implemented on IOS-XR within the Cisco environment today. I expect this is why IOS-XE is lagging. There are certainly requests for support - but as Mark says, you’ll need to interface with your account team to figure out when code will be available for your platform.
>
> As to whether you should buy an IOS XR device for your edge, I’m not sure what kind of logic would mean that device selection is solely based on PCEP support :-). I would certainly look more into the existing “automatic” tools, and possibilities for offline calculation in the interim period.
>
> r.
>




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