Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP

Rajeev Jain

Venkatavaradhan Devarajan

Saumya Dikshit

A system for facilitating loop-free traffic forwarding is provided. During operation, the system can operate a switch as a tunnel endpoint for a plurality of tunnels with corresponding remote endpoints. The system can determine a tunnel network identifier (TNI) associated with a respective virtual local area network (VLAN) configured at the switch. The system can then enable the TNI for a first tunnel among the plurality of tunnels for carrying traffic of the VLAN. Here, traffic of the VLAN is only forwarded over the first tunnel. Therefore, the system can prevent the rest of the plurality of tunnels from looping the traffic of the VLAN back to the switch. The system can select a second tunnel as a standby tunnel for the TNI from the rest of the plurality of tunnels. If the first tunnel is unavailable, the system can enable the TNI for the second tunnel for traffic forwarding.

Active tunnel selection for facilitating loop-free layer-2 traffic forwarding in an overlay network

In an example, a network switch is to receive a loop detect packet from an access netwssork connected to a Data center network (DCN). The DCN includes a VXLAN overlay and the network switch is configured as a VTEP. The network switch compares the VNI of a source VTEP from which the loop detect packet originates with a locally configured VNI. In response to a match, it is determined that the network switch is configured as a peer VTEP. Import RT in the loop detect packet is compared with an export RT of the peer VTEP and the export RT in the loop detect packet is compared with an import RT of the peer VTEP. Based on the comparison, it is determined whether a VXLAN tunnel is configured between the peer and the source VTEPs. In response to the VXLAN tunnel being configured, the switch may determine that a network loop is present.

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Bengaluru, India

Rajeev Jain