ExtremeXOS Resiliency Enhancement for IPv6 Static Routes
The ExtremeXOS Resiliency Enhancement feature provides a
resilient way to use ECMP to load balance IPv6 traffic among multiple
servers or other specialized devices. ExtremeXOS automatically manages the set of active devices
using ECMP static routes configured with ping protection to monitor the health of these routes.
Such servers or specialized devices do not require special software to support Bidirectional
Forwarding Detection (BFD), or IP routing protocols such as OSPF, or
proprietary protocols to provide keepalive messages. ExtremeXOS uses industry-standard and
required protocols ICMPv6/Neighbor Discovery for IPv6 to accomplish the following
automatically:
- Initially verify devices and activate their static routes, without waiting for inbound user traffic, and without requiring configuration of device MAC addresses.
- Detect silent device outages and inactivate corresponding static routes.
- Reactivate static routes after device recovery, or hardware replacement with a new MAC address.
ExtremeXOS currently supports similar protection and resiliency using Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD) on IPv4 and IPv6 static routes. However, BFD can only be used when the local and remote device both support BFD.