Functional overview

The MPLS VPN-Tagging Server discovers VRF-based network connections and sends the connection information to IP Availability Manager. IP Availability Manager uses the connection information to distinguish the overlapping IPs in certain VRF overlapping IP configurations.

The MPLS VPN-Tagging Server writes the discovered VRF-related information to a single instance of “IP_External” on IP Availability Manager. IP_External is a class that stores the VRF-related information as four tables, one of which is the Network Connection table.

Using the IP tag and network connection information from the Network Connection table, IP Availability Manager is able to build the correct network connections for all three overlapping IP configurations in GUID-8853805C-1B9A-4815-8AC6-D916AC76D2AA.html#GUID-8853805C-1B9A-4815-8AC6-D916AC76D2AA___MPLS_DISCO_OVERLAPPING_32083, GUID-8853805C-1B9A-4815-8AC6-D916AC76D2AA.html#GUID-8853805C-1B9A-4815-8AC6-D916AC76D2AA___MPLS_DISCO_OVERLAPPING_68174, and GUID-8853805C-1B9A-4815-8AC6-D916AC76D2AA.html#GUID-8853805C-1B9A-4815-8AC6-D916AC76D2AA___MPLS_DISCO_OVERLAPPING_96293. For configuration 3, IP Availability Manager is limited to building only system-level network connections.

The MPLS VPN-Tagging Server performs overlapping-IP and corresponding network-connection discovery in two vendor-specific environments:

• Cisco

• Alcatel-Lucent

  The MPLS VPN-Tagging Server can perform discovery in both environments at the same time.