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Virtual Networks
burbankmarc
Member Posts: 460
in CCIE
Hey all, just trying to open up some discussion. I've been studying off and on (mostly off lately) MPLS. I've been going over MPLS-TE pretty in depth. It's pretty cool, and it seems great. Well, today I went to a luncheon with Avaya and they were touting their VENA solution, which is Virtual Enterprise Network Architecture. It sounded a LOT like MPLS-TE, only they've extended it to layer 2. It sets up "provisions" which are constraint based and is all calculated with the SPF algorithm. They were touting ridiculous layer 2 re-convergence of 8ms. That's just bananas.
I was wondering what other technologies are like this? I've not been exposed to Cisco's Nexus switches so I'm not too privy. But creating VRFs that go completely end to end seems pretty cool.
I was wondering what other technologies are like this? I've not been exposed to Cisco's Nexus switches so I'm not too privy. But creating VRFs that go completely end to end seems pretty cool.
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Optionsburbankmarc
Member Posts: 460
After doing more research I guess the VENA stuff is just 802.1aq. There are 2 new competing technologies; TRILL, and 802.1aq. Both create bridge adjacencies and use IS-IS to compute SPF trees. This eliminates SPT entirely. Both are backwards compatible, but 802.1aq can run on current ASICs where TRILL cannot.
I guess the Nexus switches use FibrePath, which is a pre-standard version of TRILL, but it actually seems to lean more towards 802.1aq.
Currently only Avaya, Huawei, and Alcatel switches ship with 802.1aq support. I don't know of any vendor using TRILL.