ExtremeXOS Resiliency Enhancement for IPv4 Static Routes
The ExtremeXOS Resiliency Enhancement feature provides a
resilient way to use ECMP to load balance IPv4 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 ICMP/ARP for IPv4 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 static routes. However, BFD can only be used when the local and remote device both support BFD.