When local switching is enabled, traffic is switched and flooded among AC endpoints in addition to between ACs and PWs. When local switching is disabled, the flooding between AC endpoints is suppressed.
When an unknown unicast packet is received on an AC endpoint and local switching is enabled, the packet is flooded to all other AC endpoints and PW endpoints in the VPLS instance. When local switching is disabled, the unknown packet is only flooded to the PW endpoints in the domain.
Regardless of the local switching configuration, an unknown unicast packet that is received on a PW endpoint is flooded to all AC endpoints.
By default, local switching is enabled.
In a VPLS instance that does not have a PW peer and where all endpoints are AC endpoints (Local VPLS), local switching must be enabled.
To avoid receipt of traffic with different VLAN tags on local endpoints, it is recommended that local switching is disabled in a bridge domain where the PW profile is configured with the VC mode option of raw-passthrough. Raw passthorugh mode is designed to forward packets between two VPLS peer devices and is not intended for use with local switching.