VPLS vs VPWS—How Much Do You Know?

Recently, network virtualization technology is the most popular and advanced technology both in our daily life and professional fields. There is a wide range of VPN technology available, such as VPLS and VPWS. Based on the use of Ethernet transport, VPLS and VPWS provide high-speed communications. But many business users who are seeking the most cost-efficient and efficient solutions for their network are confused when they face the two technologies VPLS and VPWS. Here focus on VPLS vs VPWS, to unveil their mysteries.

What Is VPLS？
Virtual private LAN service (VPLS) is a Layer 2 technology that uses MPLS and VPN to connect different LANs over the Internet. It’s a point to multipoint service that enables geographically isolated sites to be connected through a MAN or a WAN. And all services in a VPLS are on the same LAN. CE and PE are the two basic concepts used in VPLS. CE stands for custom edge, which is the device like a router or a 10gbe switch at the customer premises. PE, the provider edge, is defined as the router at the network of the service provider. It’s typically connected with the CE and responsible for VPN access.

How VPLS Works?

Now let’s look at how VPLS works. In VPLS, first, the packet from a service provider network is sent to a CE device (for example, a 48 port 10gbe switch ). Then, the packet is sent to a PE router. It goes through the service provider network via the MPLS label-switched path. At last, when the packet arrives at the exist PE router, it will forward the traffic to the CE device at the destination customer site. For people who implement VPLS on a data switch, they will enjoy a fast, secure and homogeneous network with lower latency.



Figure 1: Example of VPLS

What Is VPWS?
Virtual private wire service or VPWS is built on MPLS network and provides point to point connections that connect end customer sites in a VPN. It’s also a Layer 2 technology that consists of three main elements, PE routers, Label Distribution Protocol (LDP) and Label Switched Path Tunnel. Unlike the traditional VPNs over Layer 2 circuits, which needs extra separate networks for IP and VPN services, VPWS can share the provider’s core network infrastructure between IP and Layer 2 VPN services. Thus, the cost of these services will be reduced. In addition, a VPWS Layer 2 VPN can be a full mesh or a hub and spoke topology. And MPLS is the tunneling in the core network. But other tunneling protocols like GRE also can be used in VPWS.


Figure 2: Example of VPWS

VPLS vs VPWS: What Are the Differences?
From the above, we can see clearly that the biggest difference of VPLS vs VPWS is that the VPLS provides a point to multipoint servers, while the VPWS provides a point to point service. It means that the CE devices of VPLS and VPWS are different. For VPLS, the CE routers just send all traffic to the PE devices. In contrast, in VPWS, CE routers are used to carry out Layer 2 switching and have to decide which virtual wire could be used to send data to another customer site.

Conclusion
As regard with VPLS vs VPWS, we know they both can build a Layer 2 VPN service to meet today’s high speed network requirement. So don’t be hesitated, use your data switches or routers to set up a safety and efficient VPLS or VPWS service to optimize your network.

Home Server Rack Setup: Making Your Home Intelligent

As we know, the server rack can organize numbers of network equipment into standard-sized rack, which greatly improves the working and management efficiency throughout the data center. Meanwhile, with the 5G IoT era approaching, more and more intelligent home appliances gradually enter our lives. People especially the IT men desire to use a centralized management to run these equipment. Of course, the best solution is the home server rack. But how much do you know about home server rack setup?



Figure 1: Intelligent Life is Coming.

What Can I Do With Home Server Rack?
Home server rack is the centralized point in your house where the wiring meets switches, routers etc. The most obvious thing that we can do with home server rack is protecting our hardware. Mounting them into the rack instead of putting them on or under a desk can avoid the risk of getting knocked over, having water or other liquids spilled on them. Besides, for the IT passionate and technology enthusiasts, they can use home server rack to build a small data center. With this, they can control and add whatever they please, like installing some game servers and email server in the meantime. So they can build their own services and have fun in running the services.

Considerations of Home Server Rack Installation Guide
As for the home server rack build, here are two aspects that must be considered so as to make sure everything goes smoothly.

Equipment numbers. Before you start the home server rack setup, you should take an inventory of your equipment such as switches, routers. Only know the specific numbers, we can determine the home server rack size. And here I suggest leaving some extra rack space, which is beneficial for cables go through the patch panel rack.

Rack location. We should determine the rack location based on convenience and available space. Because all the interior wiring like Cat5e, Cat6 for network and coax for television may join the home rack. Besides, an airy room is good for rack cooling. Thus choosing the right place in your building is critical.

How to Set Up a Server Rack?
Unlike the racks in the server room, there is no need to use a large server rack at home. So some people are fond of DIY. But I think to make a server rack may spend lots of time and energy. And most of them use the wood as the main material, which is not good for protecting the environment. Here I recommend the 12U server rack from FS.COM to you. Only cost 110 dollars, you can get a server rack that can be mounted on walls and placed on floors. It uses SPCC cold roll steel, which is more sturdy and durable than the wood ones. This equipment is specially designed with glass door to offer a better protection for your network devices, and cooling vents on the back to ensure airflow.



Figure 2: Server Rack for Home

Now, we can place the 12U home server rack in the determined location. Then mount your various devices into the rack. If you have a budget for cable management tools, you can buy a keystone patch panel to manage your cables on racks. Thus, a home server rack setup has been established, you can manage your home network devices conveniently and enjoy the customized services.

Conclusion
Home server rack brings many advantages which may make your life a lot easier and intelligent. After all the work in home server rack setup, you can pride yourself in the creation and effort. So let’s design a home server rack, and start our smart life.

What Is SNMP and How SNMP Works

IT System administrators are responsible for collecting work details of the servers and infrastructures, so as to provide a reference for subsequent network adjustment and improvement. But it’s a difficult task in large systems with hundreds or thousands of devices. SNMP protocol is born to solve this problem that lets the technicians monitor the network devices such as data switch, routers and other devices from a single management host. So what is SNMP, and how SNMP works?

What Is SNMP?
SNMP, also written as Simple Network Management Protocol, is an Internet standard protocol implemented on the application layer. The protocol was created in 1898 as a way of monitoring network performance, error rates and so on. The main purpose of SNMP is to define a unified interface and protocol for devices of different categories, versions and manufactures. Thus, assisted by SNMP, system administrators can remotely monitor and manage the numbers of systems and devices on a network, which can greatly simplify their work and improve efficiency of network administration.

How SNMP Works?
Knowing what is SNMP, here we focus on how SNMP works. In SNMP tutorial, to monitor network effectively, SNMP relies on an architecture consisting of the three parts.

SNMP managers: They can be any type of network machine including but not limited to PoE network switch, access servers, etc that has run SNMP to collect and process information of the devices on the network.

SNMP agents: They are the network-management software modules that run on the network node. They are responsible for gathering local system’s information and translating it to an SNMP-specific form.

Network management station: It’s the base that is shared between agents and managers. And it offers the memory and processing resources to the network.

SNMP works by sending message which is called protocol data units (PDUs) between SNMP managers and agents. Using SNMP queries, the manager can identify and locate the devices by receiving the responses sent by the agent. Then the monitoring tool will record and analyze the information of device performance. Thus, the administrators can manage the devices through SNMP control commands. The following picture shows how SNMP works.

Figure 1: Picture of How SNMP Works

Using SNMP to Monitor Network Device
To help IP administrators solve monitoring issue, FS.COM has released a series of switches including 10gbe switch, 40gbe and even 100gbe switch that are equipped with SNMP function.

The S5800-48F4S is a low latency L2/L3 switch with 48 1GbE SFP ports and 4 10GbE SFP+ ports. It supports MLAG, MPLS, SNMP etc, which is perfect for traditional and fully virtualized data center. As for the SNMP configuration, first you should enter the switch administrative interface. Then find the SNMP tab, and select Enable. And follow the commands to create your SNMP account. Thus, you already are enabled to use SNMP to monitor your network.

Figure 2: S5800-48F4S Switch with SNMP Function

Conclusion
What is SNMP and how SNMP works, now I have explained to you. It is an efficient tool to simplify network monitoring works. So using network switch with SNMP function is a convenient way to collect devices’ data and help IT professionals manage the devices efficiently.

Related Article: SFlow vs NetFlow vs SNMP: What Are the Differences?

What Is DHCP and How It Works

To transmit data back and forth across the Internet, an IP address that administrators have to accomplish and configure on a router or Lay3 fiber switch is the essential cornerstone of a host. Besides, when you want to communicate with other networks, you need to know the default gateway address and subnet mask for the local network, as well as the DNS server. DHCP can help you get all the information dynamically. So what is DHCP and how it works?

What Is DHCP?
DHCP wiki defines the term dynamic host configuration protocol as a network management protocol used on UDP/IP networks. It assigns an IP address and some other configuration parameters to each network device automatically, so that the device will be authorized to communicate with other IP networks. This means users don’t need to configure the network, just plug the wire into your computer or connect to the WiFi, your computer will automatically receive the IP address, subnet mask, default gateway and DNS server. Then how to enable DHCP? DHCP can be installed on a single server or integrated in most network equipment like a Gigabit PoE switch, a router or even the firewall. The following are some related terms we should know.

DHCP Client—It obtains an IP address and other parameters from a DHCP server. It is the initiator of an IP address allocation.

DHCP Server—It assigns IP address and other parameters to the DHCP client.

DHCP Repeater—It forwards DHCP messages between a DHCP server and DHCP clients.

DHCP Snooping—It records the users’information that has applied for IP address through the layer 2 equipment.

What Are the Advantages of DHCP?
DHCP protocol reduces the complexity and numbers of administrative work by using automatic TCP/IP configuration. This is the greatest benefit. Today, no matter in the data center or at home, more and more devices are being networked from printers and fax machines to TV and fridges. Often times, these devices are placed in different locations, without DHCP, you have to get up out of your comfy chair and find the device and configure each manually. But assisted by DHCP protocol, all you need to do is changing the settings on the server or may be a 10gbe switch. As addresses are assigned automatically, there is no need to keep a record of the used and free ones. Besides, DHCP snooping can detect unauthorized DHCP server on the network.

How DHCP Works?
As the title mentions what is DHCP and how it works, now we have learned what DHCP is, let’s turn to its operation. In essence, DHCP leases IP address and other parameters to the specific clients for a period of time. The following picture shows how DHCP works.


Step one: When a new client wants to join a network, it will broadcast a DHCP discover packet to the servers.

Step two: To answer the request, DHCP servers will send the free DHCP offer packet to the client.

Step three: The client takes the first DHCP offer message from different serves. Then it will send a DHCP request to the Internet to indicate which IP address it has taken.

Step four: DHCP server sends an acknowledge message to make sure the IP address has been used that will not assign to any other client. And now the client can participate on the network.

Conclusion
With regard to the question, what is DHCP and how it works, I think you have found the answer. Any questions of DHCP or network switch supporting DHCP, you can visit FS.COM or contact via sales@fs.com.

What Is IGMP Snooping

With the development of Internet technology, traditional network unicast mode can’t meet today’s data transmission requirement. On the contrary, this mode increases network load and consuming network bandwidth greatly. IGMP snooping is developed to solve the problem. So what is IGMP snooping?

Introduction of IGMP Snooping
IGMP (Internet Group Management Protocol) is a communications protocol. So what is IGMP used for? Commonly, it’s used to establish membership in a multicast group. And each member host of an IP multicast is a transmitter or receiver.

As for IGMP snooping, which sounds like an obscure hacker technique that may break into one’s network, is actually an advanced option available on most of switches or routers. Wiki defines it as the process of listening to IGMP network traffic. It is a multicast constraint mechanism running on the two-layer device, which is used to manage and control the multicast group. If there are plenty of multicast traffic in your network, the whole performance may be effected due to the excessive false flooding. At this moment, IGMP snooping switch can help to optimize your network. It enables the Gigabit Ethernet switch configured with IGMP snooping decides which devices will receive the applicable multicast traffic, thus the others won’t receive the message. This means broadcast packet on layer 2 has been reduced so that the network bandwidth will be conserved. Besides, IGMP snooping helps improve message information.

IGMP Snooping Process
After knowing what is IGMP snooping, let’s see how it works. Once a device joined the multicast group, the router or fiber switch will notice this. Then the message cab forwarded to the devices that have joined the multicast group. Look at Figure 1, when the switch runs without IGMP snooping, the multicast packet will be transmitted to host A, B and C. But when the switch has set up IGMP snooping, only multicast group members host A and C can receive the multicast packet. This is the main IGMP snooping tutorial.



Figure 1: The picture shows how IGMP works.

Using FS.COM Switch to Build IGMP Snooping
To keep pace with the technology development, FS.COM releases a set of switches to help customers establish IGMP snooping. Here is a 24 port switch named S3700-24T4S. The 1G managed switch provides an affordable solution for business of all sizes requiring switches with essential L2 switching features like VLAN and IGMP snooping, along with a simple and intuitive management interface. It includes 24 10/100/1000Base-T Ports and 4 10G SFP+ ports to extend your home or business network at gigabit speeds. Equipped with ARM CPU and BCM53346 chip, the Lay 2 switch has a switching capacity of 128Gbps, which is compliant with the international standard.



Figure 2: S3700-24T4S 24 Port Switch

Conclusion
Now I think you know the answer of the question we posed at first, what is IGMP snooping. When IGMP snooping is enabled, the bandwidth consumption will be reduced in a multi-access LAN environment so as to avoid flooding the entire VLAN. Any question about IGMP snooping configuration, please contact us via support@feisu.com.