VXLAN

The IETF Network Virtualization Overlays (NVO3) Working Group developed considerations for a common encapsulation that addresses various network virtualization overlay technical concerns. This document provides a record, for the benefit of the IETF community, of the considerations arrived at by the NVO3 Working Group starting from the output of the NVO3 encapsulation Design Team. These considerations may be helpful with future deliberations by working groups over the choice of encapsulation formats.

There are implications of having different encapsulations in real environments consisting of both software and hardware implementations and within and spanning multiple data centers. For example, Operations, Administration, and Maintenance (OAM) functions such as path MTU discovery become challenging with multiple encapsulations along the data path.

Based on these considerations, the NVO3 Working Group determined that Generic Network Virtualization Encapsulation (Geneve) with a few modifications is the common encapsulation. This document provides more details, particularly in Section 7.

This document describes the use of the Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD) protocol in point-to-point Virtual eXtensible Local Area Network (VXLAN) tunnels used to form an overlay network.

This document specifies how Ethernet VPN (EVPN) can be used as a Network Virtualization Overlay (NVO) solution and explores the various tunnel encapsulation options over IP and their impact on the EVPN control plane and procedures. In particular, the following encapsulation options are analyzed: Virtual Extensible LAN (VXLAN), Network Virtualization using Generic Routing Encapsulation (NVGRE), and MPLS over GRE. This specification is also applicable to Generic Network Virtualization Encapsulation (GENEVE); however, some incremental work is required, which will be covered in a separate document. This document also specifies new multihoming procedures for split-horizon filtering and mass withdrawal. It also specifies EVPN route constructions for VXLAN/NVGRE encapsulations and Autonomous System Border Router (ASBR) procedures for multihoming of Network Virtualization Edge (NVE) devices.

This document provides a framework for supporting multicast traffic in a network that uses Network Virtualization over Layer 3 (NVO3). Both infrastructure multicast and application-specific multicast are discussed. It describes the various mechanisms that can be used for delivering such traffic as well as the data plane and control plane considerations for each of the mechanisms.

This document describes Virtual eXtensible Local Area Network (VXLAN), which is used to address the need for overlay networks within virtualized data centers accommodating multiple tenants. The scheme and the related protocols can be used in networks for cloud service providers and enterprise data centers. This memo documents the deployed VXLAN protocol for the benefit of the Internet community.