Today I am going to talk about the next step in the BGP. As we discussed on BGP Synchronisation and BGP multihop concept in my earlier articles. If you would like to have a look on that topics please check with the below links for your references.

BGP Synchronization Rule
BGP Load balancing ebgp-multihop

Some of the other articles on the BGP where we have BGP basics , BGP configurations on HP Routers and other articles are

BGP Basics Overview
Cisco Routers Sample BGP Configurations : Quick and Easy
Juniper Routers Sample BGP Configurations : Quick and Easy

In this article, I will take through the concept of the route maps and the configuration of the route maps in the BGP environment. All these configurations showing below will be on Cisco router.

Why we are using the BGP route maps, well route maps are used to control BGP routing information. Route maps are to define the condition by which routes are redistributed between routing domains.

Note : Route maps cannot be used to filter incoming BGP updates based on IP address. You can, however, use route maps to filter outgoing BGP updates based on IP address.

With the use of Continue reading

Today I am going to talk about one of the basic feature of the BGP named as BGP Synchronization. Your first question : what is BGP Synchronization ? 

BGP Synchronization means that the BGP should not advertise a route until all of the routers within the AS have learned about the route via an IGP. Hope it clears the concept. Let me explain you in another way. It means if you got a ebgp route from the external neighbor via router A (as a assumption) and you want to send it to router B which is connected to another ebgp neighbour, the routes can only be learned to router B once learned by internal routers via IGP protocol.

Let me take an topology and explanation to it and further we can go with the configuration where we will disable the Synchronization as we don't want the traffic to be known to the IGP protocol.

Fig 1.1- BGP Synchronization

Today I am going to talk about the BGP configuration where i will tell you about the load balancing between the two links connecting two service providers via BGP protocol. We have two different methods to achieve this one is use of ebgp multihop command or the other way is to use the ttl security command and both these methods are applicable on the BGP neighbor command.

In this article, We are going to take through the ebgp multihop command on to the neighbours between two service providers. I knew many of you already knew the load balancing concept in the BGP.

In my example, I am taking two serial links between two routers which shares the e-BGP information between them which means each router belongs to the specific AS number. Below is the topology for your reference.

Fig 1.1- use of ebgp multihop

In the above topology, Router A is in AS100 have two serial links connected to Router B which is in AS 200 and for both the links, e-bgp is sharing information.

Below is the configuration on Router A and Router B for your reference. All the IPs and the topology uses here has no relevance Continue reading

Today I am going to talk about the Voice VLAN. The Voice VLAN feature enables the VLAN to carry the voice traffic. So you have a switch with is connected to the IP Phones, it can be of Cisco Avaya or any other and is connected to the specified VLANs or you can name them Voice VLANs in your network. So when switch is connected to the IP phones, the connected switch sends the voice traffic with layer 3 IP precedence and Layer 2 class of service in short name as COS values which are set as default of value 5. That is the reason because the sound quality of an IP phone call can deteriorate if the data is unevenly sent, the switch supports quality of service (QoS) based on IEEE 802.1p CoS. 

Fig 1.1- Sample Topology- Switch and IP Phone

Today I am going to talk about the configuration part of the BGP router id per VRF. In my example we took two different VRFs name NB and ttlbits and defined that VRF configurations.

The IP addresses are used here is for the demo purposes only and has no relevance with any of the enterprise network. These configurations are the demo configurations and will help you out for the configuration on your live network.

Below are the steps to configure the BGP router id per VRF. These steps are

• Defining VRF_ttlbits on the router
• Defining VRF_NB on the router
• Configuring Loopback with the IP address
• Configuring Ethernet interfaces with VRF
• Configuring VPNv4 and IPv4 address family

Fig 1.1- Basic Sample MPLS network topology

Below is the basic configuration of defining the VRF

Defining VRF ttlbits on the router

Today I am going to talk about the VPLS configuration on Cisco ASR 9000 series routers. Before we will start with the configuration part, lets talk about the basics of the VPLS.

Today I am going to talk about the configurations of DMVPN on Juniper routers and then associate Dynamic VPN with remote clients step by step. I talked about DMVPN earlier in my articles as well where i explained the basics of the DMVPN. I promised at that time that I will come up with the configurations of DMVPN on each and every vendor. Now I am coming up with the DMVPN configurations on Juniper routers first and I will come up with the configurations on Cisco, Huawei and HP routers later on.

Below are some of the links where i started with the DMVPN explanations
DMVPN Basics
DMVPN Vs IPSEC Basics
Quick Comparison: IPSEC vs DMVPN vs EasyVPN vs GETVPN


The configurations used here are for the demo purposes and has no relevance with any of the live and the enterprise networks. What kind of Topology it looks like, So i am pasting here the sample DMVPN topology and has no relevance with the configuration defining below. The configuration is just for your reference to take it further.

Fig 1.1- Sample DMVPN Topology

I am going to talk about the OSPF show commands in this article on different vendors which includes Cisco, Juniper, Huawei, HP and Arista Networks. These commands are working as per the device you have. Please let me know if you knew any other commands in general for OSPF in different platforms which includes Cisco, Juniper, Huawei, HP and Arista Networks.

Fig 1.1- Sample OSPF topology

Above is the sample topology and below are the sample OSPF show commands which will help you to troubleshoot OSPF in your network for the various platforms

Cisco OSPF show Commands

Today I am going to talk about the Juniper Q-Fabric solution which is an alternate approach to the Cisco SDA - Software Defined Access solution in the market. If you check the SDA in detail, Cisco uses Fabric network and on the top of it they are using LISP and VXLAN in the campus environment as a overlay protocols. On top of it there is Automation, Analytics and Authentication which is then connected via different APIs in the network.

Let's talk about the Q-fabric which is introduced by Juniper in the market. The so called Q-fabric of juniper is composed of multiple components working together as a single switch to provide high-performance, any-to-any connectivity and management simplicity in the data center or in the campus as well that depends where the requirement actually have.

QFabric System flattens the entire data center network to a single tier where all access points are equal, eliminating the effects of network locality and making it the ideal network foundation for cloud-ready, virtualized data centers.

With the help of QFabric System you can actually improves application performance with low latency and converged services in a nonblocking, lossless architecture that supports Layer 2, Layer 3, Continue reading

Today I am going to talk about the BGP configurations on the HP routers. I already posted the articles on the BGP configurations earlier where i defined the basic configurations on the Cisco and Juniper routers. Apart from these configurations I already put the basic information of the BGP as well. Below are some of the articles for which you can refer to study yourself step by step.

BGP Basics
BGP basics on Juniper Routers
BGP configurations on Cisco routers

Today I am going to have the basic configurations on HP routers with the topology. Below is the basic topology and the basic BGP configuration as below. The Topology and the IP addresses used here are only for the demo purposes and has no relevance with any of the live or enterprise networks.

Below is the demo topology showing the use of the HP routers where BGP is configured in the MPLS environment. This is just a example to showcase the topology. I will come up with the configurations on HP routers in the MPLS environment in later stage. As of now first we need to talk about the basic BGP on the HP routers and step by step we Continue reading

Today I am going to talk about new generation technology which Cisco launches in the LAN Campus network. The Next generation is dedicated to the Software defined network and thats what Cisco takes this approach to the LAN network as well with orchestration. Cisco put the pillars and made a architecture around it which includes - Campus Fabric Network, Automation, Authentication and Analytics. All these features are built into the SD-Access technology and will going to replace the traditional approach of Campus Network.

I knew you have some questions around it like
How traffic flows in Campus Network?
What and how fabric works?
Is there VLAN approach works?
Do we need to have SVIs ?

Well take a look into SD-Access approach you will come to know what approach Cisco takes to make it successful in the Campus

SD-Access = Campus Fabric+ DNA Center

Campus Fabric: 
Campus Fabric have these three protocols works together to make it excellent way to communicate.

• LISP- Location/Identifier Seperation Protocol- Control Plane 
• VXLAN- Virtual Extensible LAN - Data Plane
• Cisco Trustsec- Segmented Tags

Today I am going to talk about the fixed core chassis Cisco catalyst 9500 which Cisco released a month back. Cisco 9500 is actually enhanced version of Cisco catalyst 4500 chassis and also Cisco 3850 Switch. There are lot of other best features in Cisco 9500 Chassis as some of the features are just amazing in this device.

So we have Cisco 3850, Cisco 4500 Catalyst Switches, Cisco 6500 Catalyst switches, Cisco 6800 Catalyst switches and now Cisco 9000 catalyst switches with 3 flavours ( Cisco 9300 catalyst switches, Cisco 9400 catalyst switches and Cisco 9500 Catalyst switches)

How topology and the demand changes, below is the example topology showing the changes which leads to the next generation fabric network with cloud ready solutions and automation. CLI is gone for the campus fabric, All policy is driven with the SDN controller.

Fig 1.1- Network topology and Next Generations

If we have Cisco 4500 and Cisco 3850 fixed chassis why we required Cisco 9500 chassis ?
I knew this is one of the question which you actually thinking and for this i would like to say that you need to understand the next generation campus requirements where customer wants to be Continue reading

Today I am going to talk about the configuration of the Brocade router as Zone-Based Firewall. The first query in your mind will be that what is this zone based firewalls are ?

Well Zone based Firewalls are interfaces that are grouped into security “zones,” where each interface in a zone has the same security level.

In the Zone Based Firewalls, the packet-filtering policies are applied to the traffic flowing between the various zones in the network which is defined by the network administrator . So the concept is simple that the traffic flowing between interfaces that is there in the same zone is not filtered and flows freely because the interfaces share the same security level and the traffic flowing between the different zones will be filtered accordingly as security level can be different for different zones.

I will come up the Zone based Firewalls for Cisco soon in another article where i can share the configurations with the topology. This article is purely of Brocade where it is worked as Zone Based Firewall.

So below is the network where we defined three different zones which is defined by network administrator as per the demand in the network. The Zones are

• Continue reading

Today I am going to talk about the basic configuration of OSPF in Huawei Routers. There is already have a article on OSPF configuration on Cisco routers
OSPF Basic configuration Step by step on Cisco Routers

Apart from the above we have another articles on OSPF as shown below
OSPF Basics
OSPF Point to Multipoint Configuration- Cisco and Juniper
OSPF States
Difference between OSPF and RIP

Lets take an Topology here and below is the diagram for the configuration. We have the following topology as :

• Router A is connected between Area 1 and Area 0
• Router B is connected between Area 2 and Area 0
• Router C is a internal Area 1 Router
• Router D is a internal Area 2 Router
• Router E is a internal Area 1 Router
• Router F is a internal Area 2 Router

Fig 1.1-