Summary

Egress Peer Engineering (EPE) is a technique for ingress ASBR to steer traffic to the specific BGP peer of the specific egress ASBR.

EPE with Traffic Dictator allows the network operator to optimize edge routing to achieve efficient load balancing and predictable convergence with minimal operational complexity and a single point of control for egress traffic. It also helps to save costs by buying less egress bandwidth, and using cheaper routers with less memory, because Traffic Dictator allows to use a default route instead of BGP full view while still providing flexibility to balance traffic in any topology.

EPE with Segment Routing

Segment Routing works very well together with EPE. Peer SID, Null endpoint and color-only steering are powerful tools which enable simple and flexible network designs.

Solution White Paper

Click the link below to download the white paper:

Edge Routing Optimization with SR v1.1

Containerlab setup with cEOS

Download lab configs from: https://vegvisir.ie/wp-content/uploads/dist/TD_epe_sr_demo_eos.tar.gz

Upload to your containerlab host and extract the archive:

sudo tar -xvf TD_epe_sr_demo_eos.tar.gz

Edit the file “TD_epe_sr_demo_eos.clab.yml” to change your cEOS container image name to appropriate release.

First run the Traffic Dictator (change the home directory name to yours) :

sudo docker run --name traffic-dictator --hostname TD1 -v /home/dima/TD_config_epe_sr_demo_eos:/usr/local/td/startup-config --privileged -d traffic_dictator:1.2

Then run the containerlab:

sudo containerlab deploy

Wait for several minutes for all nodes to start.

EPE without Segment Routing

While Traffic Dictator has been primarily designed to work with Segment Routing, it is possible to use Egress Peer Engineering with other MPLS control planes such as LDP or RSVP. In this case, there is no need to advertise IGP topology to Traffic Dictator via BGP-LS; only EPE labels are advertised using BGP-LU or BGP-LS. Then the operator can configure EPE-only policies that will only affect egress peerings but use the path provided by existing MPLS control plane to reach the egress ASBR.

Solution White Paper

Click the link below to download the white paper:

Edge Routing Optimization with EPE

Containerlab setup with cEOS

Download lab configs from: https://vegvisir.ie/wp-content/uploads/dist/TD_epe_only_demo_eos.tar.gz

Upload to your containerlab host and extract the archive:

sudo tar -xvf TD_epe_only_demo_eos.tar.gz

Edit the file “TD_epe_only_demo_eos.clab.yml” to change your cEOS container image name to appropriate release.

First run the Traffic Dictator (change the home directory name to yours) :

sudo docker run --name traffic-dictator --hostname TD1 -v /home/dima/TD_config_epe_only_demo_eos:/usr/local/td/startup-config --privileged -d traffic_dictator:1.2

Then run the containerlab:

sudo containerlab deploy

Wait for several minutes for all nodes to start.

Further information

Check out Traffic Dictator White Paper on the Products page or email info@vegvisir.ie with any questions.