Fabric Path
- L2 routing protocol (MAC in MAC Routing).
- Alternative to running STP, built-in loop prevention and mitigation.
- Even with vPC, you still have STP.
- vPC is a physical triangle and logical P2P link.
- can have only 2 vPC peers.
- thus distribution blocks can be only 2 upstream switches.
- FP builds arbitrary topologies.
- full mesh
- partial mesh
- triangle
- square
- Single CP for unknown ucast, ucast, bcast and mcast traffic.
- Enhances mobility and virtualization in FP network.
- MAC mobility : physically move L2 node, but retain the same MAC address and VLAN association for the VM.
- FP retains config across an ISSU.
- FP is not TRILL.
Requirements:
- FP is not Ethernet (hence HW support is limited), it is not Ethernet in Ethernet, is Ethernet in FP tunneling.
- F line card.
- Enhanced L2 license (on every system that enables FP).
- NX7K and NX55K.
- Beginning NX-OS 6.1, FEX with vPC+ on F2 cards is supported.
FP terminology
CE : Classical Ethernet
- regular ethernet with regular flooding, STP