Re: Cisco's IOS-XE and PCEP implementation

[Rob Shakir <rjs () rob sh>]

On 30 March 2015 at 15:42:59, Mohamed Kamal (mkamal () noor net) wrote:
> I'm wondering, why there is no MPLS-TE PCE support for IOS-XE till now?!
>  
> Should I be getting a 9k/CRS on the edge to implement an automatic tool
> to build MPLS-TE tunnels!

In general, PCE(P) implementations have been limited. IMHO the last 10 years of RSVP-TE management has generally been 
done with auto-mesh tools, or in-house driven offline path calculation tools (e.g., WANDL, Cariden, Aria…). 

As such, the demand for online calculation has increased - either due to dependencies for new TE path-instantiating 
protocols (e.g., SR), or more complex constraints that cannot be well met by offline calculation or CSPF (e.g., 
path-diversity with disjoint head-end PEs). This demand is mainly coming in higher-scale environments - and hence being 
implemented on IOS-XR within the Cisco environment today. I expect this is why IOS-XE is lagging. There are certainly 
requests for support - but as Mark says, you’ll need to interface with your account team to figure out when code will 
be available for your platform.

As to whether you should buy an IOS XR device for your edge, I’m not sure what kind of logic would mean that device 
selection is solely based on PCEP support :-). I would certainly look more into the existing “automatic” tools, and 
possibilities for offline calculation in the interim period.

r.