Cisco Resilient Ethernet Protocol

Configuring Resilient Ethernet Protocol

Resilient Ethernet Protocol (REP) is a Cisco propietary protocol which allows you to build redundant Ethernet rings. It’s an alternative to Spanning-Tree protocol and also avoids bridging loops or responds to link failures.

Compared to STP, it offers a faster convergence time (< 300ms) and gives you a simple VLAN load-balancing method.
In our example, we interconnect three switches (Cisco ME3400 with me340x-metroaccess-mz.122-50.SE1.bin) to a ring topology. In REP terminology, this is called a segment.
A REP segment is a chain of ports connected to each other and configured with a segment ID. Each segment consists of standard (nonedge) segment ports and two user-configured edge ports. A switch can have only two ports belonging to the same segment, and each segment port can have only one external neighbor.

REP segments have the following characteristics:

• When all ports in a segment are operational, one port (referred to as the alternate port) is in the blocked state for each VLAN.
• If VLAN load balancing is configured, two ports in the segment control the blocked state of VLANs.
• If one or more ports in a segment is not operational, causing a link failure, all ports forward traffic on all VLANs to ensure connectivity.
• In case of a link failure, the alternate ports are unblocked as quickly as possible. When the failed link comes back up, a logically blocked port per VLAN is selected with minimal disruption to the network.

Valid port states in REP segments are Failed, Open, or Alternate.

• A port configured as a regular segment port starts as a failed port.
• After the neighbor adjacencies are determined, the port changes to alternate port state, blocking all VLANs on the interface. Blocked port negotiations occur and when the segment settles, one blocked port remains in the alternate role, and all other ports become open ports.
• When a failure occurs in a link, all ports move to the open state. When the alternate port receives the failure notification, it changes to the open state, forwarding all VLANs.

Simple Configuration without VLAN load-balancing

First, we configure all ring interfaces as REP ports with segment ID 911. All interface have to be Layer 2 trunk interfaces.  To get REP working, we have to configure at least on edge port. For VLAN load-balancing, two edge ports are necessary.
I decided to configure the two edge ports on switch ME_A. Ports on ME_B and ME_C are configured as standard segment ports.

ME_A:
interface GigabitEthernet0/11
 description Trunk to ME_B
 port-type nni
 switchport mode trunk
 rep segment 911 edge primary

interface GigabitEthernet0/12
 description Trunk to ME_C
 port-type nni
 switchport mode trunk
 rep segment 911 edge

ME_B:
interface GigabitEthernet0/11
 description Trunk to ME_A
 port-type nni
 switchport mode trunk
 rep segment 911

interface GigabitEthernet0/16
 description Trunk to ME_C
 port-type nni
 switchport mode trunk
 rep segment 911

ME_C:
interface GigabitEthernet0/12
 description Trunk to ME_A
 port-type nni
 switchport mode trunk
 rep segment 911

interface GigabitEthernet0/16
 description Trunk to ME_B
 port-type nni
 switchport mode trunk
 rep segment 911

Activating REP produces a log message and you can examine the topology with “show rep topology” on switch ME_C:

ME_C#sh rep topology
REP Segment 911
BridgeName       PortName   Edge Role
---------------- ---------- ---- ----
ME_A             Gi0/11     Pri  Open
ME_B             Gi0/11          Open
ME_B             Gi0/16          Open
ME_C             Gi0/16          Open
ME_C             Gi0/12          Open
ME_A             Gi0/12     Sec  Alt

As you can see, port Gi0/12 on ME_A is in “Alt-state” and doesn’t forward traffic.  (VLAN load-balancing is disabled per default).
You can also examine the REP status of a particular interface with “show int <interface> rep [detail]“

ME_C#sh int g0/12 rep
Interface              Seg-id Type            LinkOp      Role
---------------------- ------ --------------- ----------- ----
GigabitEthernet0/12    911                    TWO_WAY     Open

ME_C#sh int g0/12 rep det
GigabitEthernet0/12   REP enabled
Segment-id: 911 (Segment)
PortID: 000C0024F7C1FE00
Preferred flag: No
Operational Link Status: TWO_WAY
Current Key: 00100024F7C1FE0070BB
Port Role: Open
Blocked VLAN: <empty>
Admin-vlan: 1
Preempt Delay Timer: disabled
LSL Ageout Timer: 5000 ms
Configured Load-balancing Block Port: none
Configured Load-balancing Block VLAN: none
STCN Propagate to: none
LSL PDU rx: 11400, tx: 7422
HFL PDU rx: 0, tx: 0
BPA TLV rx: 8680, tx: 860
BPA (STCN, LSL) TLV rx: 0, tx: 0
BPA (STCN, HFL) TLV rx: 0, tx: 0
EPA-ELECTION TLV rx: 148, tx: 19
EPA-COMMAND TLV rx: 0, tx: 0
EPA-INFO TLV rx: 2197, tx: 2202

I case of a link failure on Gi0/16 between ME_B and ME_C , you will see the following syslog message:

*Mar  1 07:03:17.617: %REP-4-LINKSTATUS: GigabitEthernet0/16 (segment 911) is non-operational due to
 port become non-trunk

REP converges immediately and unblocks the “Alt”-Link. Gi0/16 changes to “fail -state

ME_C#sh rep topology
REP Segment 911
Warning: REP detects a segment failure, topology may be incomplete

BridgeName       PortName   Edge Role
---------------- ---------- ---- ----
ME_C             Gi0/16          Fail
ME_C             Gi0/12          Open
ME_A             Gi0/12     Sec  Open

(All informations taken from Cisco Website)
Cisco Rep
source:http://www.net-gyver.com