Dell Products Inc.

Phaniraj Vattem

Anoop Ghanwani

Mukesh Moopath Velayudhan

Swaminathan Sundararaman

Anandaraj Maharajan

Mohan Ayalasomayajula

Bhavini Gada

Described herein are systems and methods for host multihoming with no state synchronization between top-of-rack (ToR) switches coupled to multiple hosts. ToR switches of a multi-homing system share a virtual MAC address and respond to Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) requests and/or Neighbor Discovery (ND) solicitations for a default gateway IP address from the host with the virtual MAC address. Ports on a ToR switch may be configured either with a static ARP and/or ND entry, or be configured to learn via a discovery protocol. The lightweight host multihoming system may have modified flooding behavior, ARP/ND handling, and data path forwarding. ARP/ND traffic from a host is processed by a ToR switch, while other multicast traffic may be discarded. Embodiments of the host multihoming system provide a lightweight solution for software implementation with minimal changes imposed on the host or network design.

Lightweight host multihoming

Embodiments are directed to a process and system for avoiding temporary traffic loss in a network having first and second computers and provider edge devices, by retaining, in each provider edge device, path information including a MAC address for the first host computer in a control plane as a dynamic address, and maintaining, in each provider edge device, its own routing table listing network addresses of the other provider edge devices as multi-homed peers. A failure recovery process in each provider edge devices advertises all multi-homed peer network addresses as addresses that each respective provider edge device has dynamically learnt in the control plane such that when a provider edge device receives a route with a locally connected host, it re-advertises the host address on its own.

Method and system to avoid temporary traffic loss with BGP ethernet VPN multi-homing with data-plane mac address learning

Embodiments are directed to a process and system for recovering from data link failure in a network, by retaining, in a first provider edge device, path information for a first host coupled to a second host over the network in a control plane, upon indication of withdrawal of the first host from a second provider edge device, starting a timer controlling a period of re-advertisement and re-routing to the first host, removing, in the first provider edge device, the first host from a data plane, and generating, in the first provider edge device, a new route to advertise the first host address to cause other provider edge devices to receive the new route and adjust their respective control plane routes prior to expiration of the timer.

Method and system to avoid temporary traffic loss with BGP ethernet VPN multi-homing with data-plane MAC address learning

Embodiments are directed to a process and system for optimizing traffic paths for orphaned hosts in a VXLAN system, by configuring virtual link trunking (VLT) peers to advertise MAC addresses learned from all multi-homed hosts in the system using Anycast VXLAN tunnel endpoint-Internet Protocol address (VTEP-IP); configuring the virtual link trunking (VLT) peers to advertise MAC addresses learned from all single-homed hosts in the system using a secondary VTEP-IP; directing unicast traffic destined to the single-homed hosts to directly connected VLT peers using the Secondary VTEP-IP; and directing Broadcast, unknown unicast, and multi-cast (BUM) traffic destined to the single-homed hosts to directly connected VLT peers using the Inclusive Multicast Ethernet Tag route.

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Santa Clara, CA, United States of America

Phaniraj Vattem