FabricPath and TRILL

Positioning, differences…
Francois Tallet, Nexus 7000 Product Management

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TRILL vs. FabricPath
What is TRILL? http://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/trill/

• TRILL, Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links

• IETF standard for Layer 2 multipathing (since summer 2011)

• Pushed by Cisco but by other competitors too.

Why aren’t we doing TRILL already?

• We delivered FabricPath before the standard, and some
critical features are still missing to TRILL
• Our FabricPath capable hardware is also TRILL capable

• We will provide TRILL as a FabricPath mode

• However the “native” FabricPath mode will be our lead

solution for the near future.

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FabricPath vs. TRILL Overview

FabricPath TRILL
Frame routing Yes Yes
(ECMP, TTL, RPFC etc…)
vPC+ Yes No
FHRP active/active Yes No
Multiple topologies Yes No
Conversational learning Yes No
Inter-switch links Point-to-point only Point-to-point OR shared

• Cisco will push FabricPath specific enhancements to TRILL

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FabricPath vs. TRILL: Encapsulation
FabricPath FabricPath
Routing Table Routing Table
Switch IF Switch IF
… … … …
S3 L1 S3 L2
A B
s1 s2 s3
L1 L2
Data s1 s3 Data s1 s3

TRILL End-to-End
Routing Table
Switch IF Mac @
S3 L1 m2 s2 s3 B
L2
S4 L1 m4 Data s1 s3 m2 m3

A s1
L1
End-to-End Hop-by-Hop
Data s1 s3 m1 m2

s4

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FabricPath vs. TRILL: Multipathing

HSRP HSRP
L3 B L3 B
Active/Active Active/Standby

G1 G2 G1 G2
FabricPath TRILL
Multipathing Multipathing

a1 a2 a5 a6 a1 a2 a5 a6

VPC+ TRILL
Active/Active Active/Standby
A C A C

• End-to-end multipathing (L2 edge, Fabric, L3 edge) provides

resiliency and fast convergence

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FabricPath vs. TRILL: Multiple Topologies

Topology 0

Topology 1
Topology 2

FabricPath
Topology: a group of links in the Fabric
• By default, all links are part of topology 0
• Links can be assigned to several topologies
• An IS-IS routing table is built per topology
• A VLAN is mapped to a unique topology

Topologies are used for static VLAN pruning, security, traffic engineering

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FabricPath vs. TRILL: CE Interaction

FabricPath

ISIS Hellos
TRILL
STP BPDUs
CE Edge Ports

• Fabric is root bridge to CE region  CE region part of TRILL fabric

• Sends BPDUs on edge ports  Send IS-IS Hellos
• Fast convergence  Slow convergence
• No BPDUs forwarded across Fabric  Snoop BPDUs to prevent loops
• Optional TC propagation  Suboptimal but required for TRILL
shared segment support

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TRILL Evolution Toward FabricPath

(Nat iv e Mode)
h
FabricPat
OAM
Segment ID
)
Anycast ode
FHRP I LLM
Multiple R
(T
topologies Path
c
abri
F

5.1 5.2 6.0 6.1 6.2

NX-OS

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