Vlan – Extend VLAN over L3 network

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I have two sites connected using ipsec, The ipsec is connected using two netscreen boxes and I want to extend VLAN from one site to other
Is it possible to achieve that without adding any new component

Best Answer

So, you want to tunnel Ethernet frames over an IP network that has an IPsec link? Works like any IP network, but you have to be careful with MTU (as always). IPsec links usually have lower maximum transmission unit (MTU) than 1500, but with Ethernet over IP you will anyway run into MTU problems.

The solution may be VXLAN, specified in RFC7348. However, do note that as VXLAN operates over UDP, there is a large amount of overhead. If the IPsec link has an MTU of 1500, then IPsec, UDP and VXLAN together add overheads meaning the Ethernet link has an MTU smaller than 1500. To have MTU of 1500 for the Ethernet link, you will need an MTU bigger than 1500 for the IPsec link, which isn't usually possible in the Internet.

Note that as VXLAN operates on layer 2, it has no way to generate ICMP packet too big messages (which are layer 3 messages). This means that you have to manually configure the MTU to a smaller value for the Ethernet link, or otherwise you will have dropped packets (=no connectivity) or fragmented packets (=performance problems).

GRE (generic routing encapsulation) specified in RFC2784 can also be used to transfer Ethernet frames (transparent Ethernet bridging, Ethertype 0x6558), but firewalls may not like GRE running directly on top of IP as much as they like VXLAN running on top of UDP. However, GRE is an industry standard that is almost unanimously used, so most good quality firewalls from reputable vendors should offer the possibility to allow GRE traffic.

The MTU/fragmentation issues apply equally to all protocols running on top of IP or UDP without TCP inbetween.

Now, what about TCP as the transport for Ethernet packets? The traffic you're transferring through the Ethernet link probably has already one level where TCP is being used, so you would then run TCP over TCP. This is heavily discouraged, as you have then two levels where retransmissions occur, meaning that the performance of the system can catastrophically degrade if there's packet loss. TCP would eliminate MTU problems, but because TCP over TCP can have catastrophical behaviour in the case of packet loss, I don't recommend it.

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