TRILL

[aks]

I don't know if anybody's heard about TRILL, here's a You Tube introduction:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-25NoCOnP4&feature=youtu.be [nofollow]

It *seems* to be about routing at layer 2 - which to me is just inside out, upside down land.  A place where cats 'n dogs play nice and my car only spews out oxygen.

I was just wondering what everyone thought and if anyone had any comments?

[Michael McNamara]

You'll find a decent write-up from Brad Hedlund on his blog here.

It sounds all good and would appear to help simplfy the network design. The folks that are still in love with STP certainly seem to be getting excited. As for myself I've been enjoying STP free topologies for years with Nortel/Avaya's proprietary SMLT technology. So I've been enjoying active/active pathing for years on my Layer 2 links. Not too long ago now Cisco finally saw the value in this design and come up with vPC (MCEC). There's certainly an argument to be had with the complexity that SMLT/vPC introduce into the network from a configuration standpoint.

Perhaps TRILL will be the next evolution beyond SMLT/vPC designs.

Right now I'm more interested in the technologies/protocols being designed/developed to help better bridge Layer 2 networks between (distant) data centers. Everyone is in search of the active/active data center but you can get into issues with geographically disperse sites.

Cheers!

[Michael McNamara]

I went digging around today... thinking about TRILL... anyone heard of PLSB?

Is Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links (TRILL) just a competing version of PLSB?

I need to-do some more reading...

Reference;
 http://www.ieee802.org/1/files/public/docs2007/aq-fedyk-provider-link-state-bridging-0107-01.pdf

Updated:
 http://www.nortel.com/corporate/news/collateral/ntj6_plsb.pdf
 http://www.ieee802.org/1/files/public/docs2007/aq-fedyk-plsb-present-0107.pdf
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKk3jkmayS4

[John T]

Nortel has been developing PLSB for quite some time thanks to their success in the Metro Ethernet market. You'll find a lot of their material dates back to 2007 and earlier.

What ever happened to the MERS (Metro Ethernet Routing Switch)? I don't think Avaya got it did they?

[Michael McNamara]

I'm not sure who got the MERS product... although I'm curious now that you've asked.

[petera1000]

Hi, I can add a few data points.

1st concerning PLSB/Nortel - Avaya is selling PLSB on their different switches and there are a bunch of deployed networks, data center/metro etc., one now topping 60 nodes or so I'm told. I've played with it and its very complete.

The standard version of PLSB is a subset of IEEE 802.1aq shortest path bridging. Its nearing completion now at the IEEE and with an IETF component that describes the IS-IS extensions.
802.1aq just went through interop between Avaya and Huawei in my lab (5 physical 32 emulated nodes) and included control/data path and L2 Pings etc. without serious problems.

There is a pretty extensive write up on wikipedia and many links to papers, slides and the NANOG tutorials and overviews. The interop report should be up there shortly too.

Start here:
      newbielink:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.1aq [nonactive]

Peter Ashwood-Smith/Huawei Technologies Canada

[Flintstone]

Hi,

I just want to add my little bit to this discussion

Cabletron (Yes, I am that old?) originally came up with Securefast Vlans in 1995 that uses OSPF (VLSP) at layer 2.  ECMP, MAC based Vlans and no STP.  This was successfully deployed around the World and all that Cisco could do to counter this was to push VTP with VMPS for their version of MAC based Vlans.  I remember working on a flat Network of 130 switches using Securefast and was way ahead of its time and even today I have not seen anything that is as good?  Maybe TRILL will change that?  This was proprietary to Cabletron but an RFC was issued at the time.

I believe John Roese who was the CTO of Cabletron/Enterasys took a version of this technology to Nortel to be used with their Metro switches?

CheerZ

[Michael McNamara]

I can remember running a campus FDDI network with Cabletron and it was very solid switch all Layer 2 as you said.

I would venture a guess that you're not far off from the truth @Flinestone.

Cheers!

[Flintstone]

The Cabletron days were when Networking was Networking?  10Meg shared Ethernet, Token Ring and as you mentioned FDDI all in the same MMAC hub and lots of different protocols to bridge I.e. Appletalk, DEC etc.  Nearly every year a new standard and associated Networking equipment was being released by the major players.  They were the days 

Anyway, I'm just amazed that TRILL has taken so long to become a standard and eliminate the need for STP when something very similar was already out there in 1995?

CheerZ

[Jon Hurtt]

Here is a good presentation and information on TRILL vs Shortest Path Bridging

The Great Debate: TRILL Versus 802.1aq (SPB) – http://goo.gl/RexL2

Avaya has re-marketed SPB technology with supplemental technologies into the Virtualized Enterprise Network Architecture (VENA)

[Dominik]

Most people looking for TRILL and SPB in fact that they are planing to switch VMs between different Datacenters.
I am asking myself how hard it can be for VM Ware to implement a technology that provides VM switchover at Layer 3.

I think some network companys wouldn´t like taht ....

[Michael McNamara]

I'll let you know in a few months... I'm currently designing a second data center where we'll try to-do either vPC (Cisco) or OTV (Cisco) between the two data centers to extend a VMware cluster.