Patent ID: 11469923

Abstract:
A set of remote Virtual Extensible LAN (VxLAN) tunnel endpoints (VTEPs) and an ingress VTEP associated different Ethernet Segments (ESs) elect amongst themselves designated forwarder (DF) for forwarding broadcast, unknown-unicast, and multicast traffic (BUM) traffic by triggering an RFC 7432 election mechanism on each of the VTEPs. In embodiments, DF election involves exchanging configuration information, such as Type-4 routes for ESs via Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), without being confined to a particular ES that is local to all VTEPs, i.e., irrespective of local ES and internet identifiers. This allows performing targeted forwarding of BUM traffic to intended VTEPs which avoiding unnecessary ingress replication of BUM traffic in the ingress VTEP, thereby, saving hardware buffer resources and avoiding unnecessary flooding of frames to a set of non-forwarding egress VTEPs, ultimately, reducing the load on the egress VTEP and freeing up packet processing resources.