Alcatel-Lucent Network Routing Specialist II (NRS II) Self-Study Guide

Preparing for the NRS II Certification Exams

Glenn Warnock, Amin Nathoo

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781118178133
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Computer Networking
• Index: Computer Science

The definitive resource for the NRS II exams—three complete courses in a book

Alcatel-Lucent is a world leader in designing and developing scalable systems for service providers. If you are a network designer or operator who uses Alcatel-Lucent's 7750 family of service routers, prepare for certification as an A-L network routing specialist with this complete self-study course. You'll get thorough preparation for the NRS II exams while you learn to build state-of-the-art, scalable IP/MPLS-based service networks.

The book provides you with an in-depth understanding of the protocols and technologies involved in building an IP/MPLS network while teaching you how to avoid pitfalls and employ the most successful techniques available. Topics covered include interior routing protocols, multiprotocol label switching (MPLS), Layer2/Layer3 services and IPv6. The included CD features practice exam questions, sample lab exercises, and more.

• Prepares network professionals for Alcatel-Lucent Service Routing Certification (SRC) exams 4A0-101, 4A0-103, 4A0-104 and NRSII4A0
• Covers content from Alcatel-Lucent's SRC courses on Interior Routing Protocols, Multiprotocol Label Switching, and Services Architecture
• Specific topics include MPLS (RSVP-TE and LDP), services architecture, Layer2/Layer 3 services (VPWS/VPLS/VPRN/IES/service inter-working/IPv6 tunneling), and OSPF and IS-IS for traffic engineering and IPv6.
• CD includes practice exam questions, lab exercises and solutions.

This Self-Study Guide is the authoritative resource for network professionals preparing for the Alcatel-Lucent NRS II certification exams.

Part I: IP Networking

Chapter 1: IP/MPLS Service Networks

Chapter 2: Layer 2: The Physical Components of the Internet

Chapter 3: IP Networks

Chapter 4: Dynamic Routing Protocols

Chapter 5: Introduction to OSPF

Chapter 6: OSPF Multi-Area Networks

Chapter 7: OSPFv

Chapter 8: Introduction to IS-IS

Chapter 9: IS-IS Multi-Area Networks

Chapter 10: IS-IS for IPv

Chapter 1

IP/MPLS Service Networks

The Alcatel-Lucent NRS II exam topics covered in this chapter include the following:

• Characteristics of IP
• Internet overview
• Alcatel-Lucent 7750 Service Router product group
• 7750 Service Router
• 7705 Service Aggregation Router
• 7450 Ethernet Service Switch
• 7210 Service Access Switch

In this chapter, we describe the development of the Internet and the characteristics of the Internet protocol (IP). We see how IP networks have evolved and the requirements of networking technology today. Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) addresses some of the limitations of IP networking and provides a foundation for building service networks. The chapter concludes with an overview of the Alcatel-Lucent Service Router product group.

1.1 Internet Protocol

Development of the Internet protocol (IP) started in 1974 and was formally defined in RFC 791 (“Request for Comments for Internet Protocol”) published in 1981. TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) became the standard protocol of the ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) on January 1, 1983—many consider this the birth of the Internet. The NSFNET (National Science Foundation Network) was created in 1986 with backbone links of 56 kb/s; these were soon upgraded to 1.5 Mb/s. Incredibly, today we’re deploying links that support 100,000 Mb/s, and we’re still using the same version of IP!

Characteristics of IP

The phenomenal growth of the Internet to date is to some extent a result of the characteristics of IP. Some of the characteristics that lead to IP’s global dominance are the following:

• Simplicity—This is the most important characteristic contributing to the success of IP. It means that new hardware and software supporting IP are easily developed, more easily deployed, and more easily managed. Simplicity also leads to lower cost, another characteristic of IP networks.
• Accessibility—This is also a very important contributing factor to the success of IP. Development of the first Internet standards was an open and collaborative process, an approach that has continued to this day. All standards documents are freely available and usually easy to understand. In an age when the only question is whether to use IPv4 or IPv6, it’s easy to forget that 20 years ago there were many different communications protocols in use, and most were proprietary. The OSI (Open System Interconnect) protocols were open, but the standards documents were expensive, complex, and difficult to follow, making them much less accessible than IP.
• Resiliency—This was one of the original design goals for IP and was achieved through the connectionless nature and simplicity of the protocol. IP routing protocols react quickly to changes in the network topology and simply change the next-hop to which they forward packets for a particular destination. It is understood that IP provides an unreliable, connectionless service, thus the higher-layer protocols provide connection-oriented features as required.

The simplicity of IP results in some serious limitations as the Internet reaches a size, complexity, and diversity of applications that was unimaginable to the early developers of the protocol. Some of the major shortcomings of IP include the following:

• Traffic engineering—This is the ability to use a more sophisticated approach to routing traffic across the network. IP uses a simple hop-by-hop approach to forward traffic across the most direct path, but for today’s networks and applications, this is often not the most suitable route. Traffic engineering allows for the use of other criteria and knowledge of the complete topology of the network to find an optimal path for a varied mix of traffic types.
• Quality of service (QoS)—This is the ability to prioritize different traffic types and provide a different service level to each. Usually these service levels relate to delivery and delay guarantees. For example, a voice-over-IP application used for a real-time conversation requires a small delay and relatively low packet loss, whereas an e-mail application can tolerate much greater delay and can easily retransmit lost packets. A simple IP network provides the same level of service to all applications (best effort).
• High resiliency—High resiliency, or high availability, goes beyond the resiliency of IP to provide connectivity that is nearly always on. We can build redundancy into a network with IP routing protocols so that most equipment failures result in an outage lasting only a few seconds. We hardly notice such an outage when surfing the Web or sending e-mails, but we are not nearly as tolerant when using IP-TV (broadcast television over IP) to watch our favorite sporting event. More demanding applications typically strive for failover in less than 50 milliseconds—1/20 of a second.
• IPv4 address space—The IPv4 address space is effectively exhausted. The number of devices connected to the Internet continues to grow exponentially, and every one needs a unique address. There are measures that have been developed to extend the IPv4 address space, but ultimately the increased address space of IPv6 is required.

QoS is a topic for another book, but this book addresses the other three issues listed above. A key technology in adding these capabilities to an IP network is Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS). We will see that MPLS is effectively a tunneling technology that allows us to build a variety of different networks using the base technology of an IP network.

Although the global, public Internet is the network that interconnects us all, in reali...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Part I: IP Networking
• Part II: Multiprotocol Label Switching
• Part III: VPN Services
• Appendix A: Chapter Assessment Questions and Answers
• Glossary
• Afterword
• Advertisement
• Lab CD: Introduction A
• Lab CD: Introduction B
• Lab CD: Chapter 2
• Lab CD: Chapter 3
• Lab CD: Chapter 5
• Lab CD: Chapter 6
• Lab CD: Chapter 7
• Lab CD: Chapter 8
• Lab CD: Chapter 9
• Lab CD: Chapter 10
• Lab CD: Chapter 12
• Lab CD: Chapter 13
• Lab CD: Chapter 14
• Lab CD: Chapter 15
• Lab CD: Chapter 16
• Lab CD: Chapter 17
• Lab CD: Chapter 18
• Lab CD: Chapter 19
• Lab CD: Chapter 20
• Lab CD: Chapter 21
• Foreword
• Introduction