Connectivity Guide

Table Of Contents
Figure 7. BGP EVPN topology
Leaf nodes
The leaf nodes are typically top-of-rack (TOR) switches in a data center network. They act as the VXLAN tunnel endpoints and perform
VXLAN encapsulation and decapsulation. The leaf nodes also participate in the MP-BGP EVPN to support control plane and data plane
functions.
The control plane functions include:
Initiate and maintain route adjacencies using any routing protocol in the underlay network.
Advertise locally learned routes to all MP-BGP EVPN peers.
Process the routes received from remote MP-BGP EVPN peers and install them in the local forwarding plane.
The data plane functions include:
Encapsulate server trac with VXLAN headers and forward the packets in the underlay network.
Decapsulate VXLAN packets received from remote VTEPs and forward the native packets to downstream hosts.
Perform underlay route processing, including routing based on the outer IP address.
Spine nodes
The role of a spine node changes based on its control plane and data plane functions. Spine nodes participate in underlay route processing
to forward packets and in the overlay network to advertise EVPN routes to all MP-BGP peers.
VXLAN
551