Getting close to sitting my ICND2 and then wanted to get into MPLS. Does MPLS require any prerequisite knowledge that would covered in CCNP? Was hoping I could just pick up a book and start knocking out some labs.
FYI for the ICND2 you don’t need to know anything about configuring MPLS. The exam’s focus is on using MPLS VPNs as a WAN option from the Enterprise perspectively. Therefore, what you need to know is basically how you interact with them from a routing perspective - where your routing adjacencies live when comparing L2 and L3 MPLS VPN, the different types of routers in the VPN setup and which you’re responsible for (CE vs. PE vs. P), and things at that level.
That said, if you just want to play with MPLS a lab, that’s obviously fine. However, MPLS VPNs are complex beasts made up of numerous more advanced technologies (MPLS, VRF, BGP w/ vpnv4 AF) all mixed together, and you won’t see anywhere near that level of detail on ICND2 (or the CCNP exams, for that matter).
Yes… also no…
If you’re talking about learning how to build an MPLS VPN, that’s typically considered a CCIE R&S level topic. You would need to understand a lot of things that aren’t covered in the NA, and probably aren’t in the NP. For instance, you have to make sure you have a fully functional underlying network for your provider devices, then you’d have to understand MP-BGP, and LDP, and MPLS, and VRFs to build it out. You’re not going to be there having only passed the NA or possibly even the NP.
With that said, there’s no reason you have to learn things in the order they’re laid out in exams. It’s not like you have to learn how private vlans or spanning tree works to get MPLS running, or to learn the underlying topics MPLS uses. As long as you go into it knowing that you will have to do more learning of the fundamentals to really understand what you’re doing with MPLS and why it’s working, you’ll be fine. Go ahead and grab a book or something, and as you work through it if you see topics you don’t understand that aren’t being covered in said book, write them down and learning them outside of that.
Will look into that thanks.
Cool. Reason I’m interested is I work for an ISP and looking to apply for a role. CCNA is listed as a requirement (not hard requirement though) and I really enjoyed the theory side in the small section from Chris Bryant’s ccna boot camp. So I want to try understand as much as I can.
Will start with a book and some videos and see where I go from there.
I did write-ups on the L2 and L3 MPLS WAN services from enterprise customer perspective and what ICND2 expects you to know couple of years back on /r/ccna. You may want to check them out. However I didn’t cover the MPLS protocol and what is happening in the ISP’s network.
Thanks for that have bookmarked
I found this book phenomenally helpful for labs. Not to mention I only had a very rudimentary understanding of MPLS before reading it. I’d have paid a considerable amount more than a tenner for it, considering the amount of useful info.
Excellent. Can you recommend any books? There’s an old MPLS Fundamentals one by Luc De Ghein. Also saw a section on CBT nuggets.
Do you think between the above 2 resources that should be enough?
Thanks for the recommendation. I know it says on the book that it’s suitable for all levels, but I wonder how much of it I’ll end up getting stuck as I’m not looking at CCIE level.
MPLS Fundamentals is required reading according to some people here who are smarter than me.
He also has a live lessons video series based on the book, very good
I can vouch for the book as well, although you can skip some very outdated atm chapters.
Watching the two 6 hour series from Keith bogart on INE taught me almost everything I needed to know regarding mpls when working on an ISP network