Inserting Additional Bridge Port Extenders on Rings

Inserting additional bridge port extenders (BPEs) on rings

You can add bridge port extenders (BPEs) to existing Extended Edge Switching ring topologies. You can add BPEs anywhere in the ring.

To add a BPE:

  1. Disconnect the cable between the two BPEs in the ring at the desired insertion point, which allows the ring to enter the severed state, and then re-converge into two operational cascades.
  2. Connect the new BPE to the same connection points disconnected previously.

    If you have auto-configuration enabled (enable vpex auto-configuration), you are finished. If you want to manually configure the rest of the setup (ensure that auto-configuration is disabled), continue with the following steps.

  3. (If you are connecting at the point where the configured cascades were joined, do not perform this step) Unconfigure the cascade port of the BPE connecting the new BPE using the procedure in Removing Bridge Port Extenders from Slot Assignments.
    Note

    Note

    To find where the configured cascades were joined, use the show vpex topology { port port_num} {summary | detail} command, and see where the dynamically created cascade ports ("d" flag) start on the cascade(s).
  4. Configure the new BPE using the procedure in Manually Configuring Bridge Port Extenders starting with step 3.
Configuring a new VPEX port/slot in a ring destroys the ring, and changes the configured cascades that formed it. For the new cascades, one ends where the new slot/BPE was added and the other ends at the next BPE that is connected to the cascade with the new slot/BPE.