EAPS offers the following benefits:
Fast Recovery time for link or node failures—When a link failure or switch failure occurs, EAPS provides fast recovery times. EAPS provides resiliency for voice, video and data services.
Scalable network segmentation and fault isolation—EAPS domains can protect groups of multiple VLANs, allowing scalable growth and broadcast loop protection. EAPS domains provide logical and physical segmentation, which means the failures in one EAPS ring do not impact network service for other rings and VLANs.
Resilient foundation for non-stop IP routing services—EAPS provides a resilient foundation for upper level routing protocols such as Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) and Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), minimizing route-flapping and dropped neighbors within the routed IP network.
Predictable convergence regardless of failure location—EAPS provides consistent and predictable recovery behavior regardless of where link failures occur. The simple blocking architecture and predictable performance of EAPS allows for enforceable Service Level Agreements (SLAs). This allows easier network troubleshooting and failure scenario analysis without lengthy testing or debugging on live production networks.
EAPS protection switching is similar to what can be achieved with the Spanning Tree Protocol (STP), but EAPS offers the advantage of converging in less than one second when a link in the ring breaks.
An Ethernet ring built using EAPS can have resilience comparable to that provided by SONET rings, at a lower cost and with fewer restraints (such as ring size). The EAPS technology developed by Extreme Networks to increase the availability and robustness of Ethernet rings is described in RFC 3619: Extreme Networks‘ Ethernet Automatic Protection Switching (EAPS) Version 1.