Terms and Acronyms

virtual private LAN service (VPLS)—An Ethernet-based multipoint-to-multipoint Layer 2 VPN service used for interconnecting multiple Ethernet LANs across an MPLS backbone. BGP-based VPLS is based on the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Internet draft draft-ietf-l2vpn-vpls-bgp-08.txt, Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS) Using BGP for Auto-discovery and Signaling (expires December 2006). LDP-based VPLS is specified in the IETF draft Virtual Private LAN Service (VPLS) Using Label Distribution Protocol (LDP) Signaling. For more information about VPLS, see the JUNOS VPNs Configuration Guide.
virtual port—A special logical interface that is generated dynamically when you configure VPLS on a PE router. Virtual ports send and receive VPLS traffic for remote PE routers as if the remote VPLS sites had Ethernet-based interfaces directly connected to the local PE router. To generate virtual ports, VPLS PE routing platforms use logical interfaces on a vt interface (that is generated by the Tunnel Services PIC, Link Services PIC, Adaptive Services PIC, an LSI interface, or a tunnel services interface configured on MX-series routers).