Fabric Attach Overview
Fabric Attach uses the IEEE802.1ab
LLDP extensions to automatically
attach network devices to individual services in a IEEE 802.1aq Shortest Path Bridging (SPB)
network. These network devices typically do not support SPB, MAC-in-MAC (802.1ah) or Network
Services Identifier (NSI)/Individual Service Identifier (ISID) usage, and therefore cannot easily
take advantage of the Fabric infrastructure without manual configuration of VLAN attachments to
NSIs or ISIDs in multiple locations. Fabric Attach deals with this issue by facilitating
automated network device discovery and the automatic configuration and teardown of NSI/ISID to
VLAN associations at the edge of the network. Fabric Attach can also use the same LLDP extensions
to allow Fabric Attach clients and proxy devices to connect to
VXLAN
overlay networks.
Note
Both terms NSI and ISID are used in this document,
with NSI being the preferred term. For
ExtremeXOS, the NSI is an ISID in SPB fabrics, but the
NSI could also be used to as an identifier for other (non-SPB) fabrics where it will not be an
ISID.
Fabric Attach supports the following:
- Single LAG between any two devices
- SPBM networks: Fabric Attach client and proxy behavior
- VXLAN overlay networks: Fabric Attach client, proxy, and server behavior
- Connection to a single Fabric Attach server
- One-to-one mapping between a VLAN and an NSI/ISID
- Stacking
- RADIUS authentication
Limitations
Mappings of VLANs to NSIs/ISIDs is limited to 94.
Fabric Attach does not support MIBs.
