Carlos Mendioroz sent me a seemingly simple question: when is a BGP route invalid? My knee-jerk reaction: when the next hop is not reachable (and I’m not the only one). WRONG – BGP routes with unreachable next hop are still valid, as shown in the following printout:

In a previous blog post I explained how load sharing across LDP-controlled MPLS core works. Now let’s focus on another detail: how are the packets assigned to individual paths across the core?

2014-08-14: Additional information was added to the blog post based on comments from Nischal Sheth, Frederic Cuiller and Tiziano Tofoni. Thank you!

One of my readers sent me this question:

I am already CCIE and work as a network engineer with pretty good salary. But I think that I am losing some passion for Cisco networking and have interests in many other technologies. Currently I am very interested in Linux and Python development. Is it worth to add some Red Hat certification along CCIE or should I pursue another CCIE?

I think “should I go for CCIE or RHCE” is the wrong question.

VXLAN is becoming de-facto encapsulation standard for overlay virtual networks (at least according to industry pundits and marketing gurus working for companies with VXLAN-based products) – even Juniper Contrail, which was traditionally a pure MPLS/VPN architecture uses it.

Not so fast – Contrail is using VXLAN packet format to carry MPLS labels between hypervisors and ToR switches.

Here’s a question that bothered me for years till I finally gave up and labbed it: does ECMP load sharing work in an MPLS core? More specifically, will an LSP split into multiple LSPs?

Maxim and myself continued our STP discussion and eventually agreed that while STP might not be the best protocol out there (remember: it had to run on Z80 CPU), it’s the only standardized thing that prevents nasty forwarding loops, prompting Maxim to ask another seemingly simple question:

What's so wrong with STP, that there are STP haters out there turning it off wherever they see it?

Welcome to the wonderful world of Expert Beginners.

Someone made a really interesting remark on my Disable Console Logging blog post: Cisco IOS has log message rate limiting – all you need is the logging rate-limit configuration command.

One of my readers opened another can of VMware vSwitch worms. He sent me this question:

If a VM were to set a COS value, would the vSwitch reset it to 0 as part of its process of building the dot1q header?

The nasty detail (as you probably know) is that 802.1p CoS value resides in the 802.1q (VLAN) tag.

Maxim Gelin sent me an interesting question:

Can you please explain to me, why is STP supposed to be evil? What's wrong with STP?

STP’s fundamental problem is that it’s a fail-close, not a fail-open protocol.

Someone recently sent me this scenario:

Our CIO has recently told us that he wants to get rid of MPLS because it is too costly and is leaning towards big Internet lines running IPSEC VPNs to connect the whole of Africa.

He was obviously shopping around for free advice (my friend Jeremy Stretch posted his answers to exactly the same set of questions not so long ago); here are the responses I wrote to his questions: