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stephen hemmingerd3428942012-10-01 12:32:35 +00001Virtual eXtensible Local Area Networking documentation
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3
4The VXLAN protocol is a tunnelling protocol that is designed to
5solve the problem of limited number of available VLAN's (4096).
6With VXLAN identifier is expanded to 24 bits.
7
8It is a draft RFC standard, that is implemented by Cisco Nexus,
9Vmware and Brocade. The protocol runs over UDP using a single
10destination port (still not standardized by IANA).
11This document describes the Linux kernel tunnel device,
12there is also an implantation of VXLAN for Openvswitch.
13
14Unlike most tunnels, a VXLAN is a 1 to N network, not just point
15to point. A VXLAN device can either dynamically learn the IP address
16of the other end, in a manner similar to a learning bridge, or the
17forwarding entries can be configured statically.
18
19The management of vxlan is done in a similar fashion to it's
20too closest neighbors GRE and VLAN. Configuring VXLAN requires
21the version of iproute2 that matches the kernel release
22where VXLAN was first merged upstream.
23
241. Create vxlan device
25 # ip li add vxlan0 type vxlan id 42 group 239.1.1.1 dev eth1
26
27This creates a new device (vxlan0). The device uses the
28the multicast group 239.1.1.1 over eth1 to handle packets where
29no entry is in the forwarding table.
30
312. Delete vxlan device
32 # ip link delete vxlan0
33
343. Show vxlan info
Zhi Yong Wucc9b3102012-11-22 00:10:01 +000035 # ip -d link show vxlan0
stephen hemmingerd3428942012-10-01 12:32:35 +000036
37It is possible to create, destroy and display the vxlan
38forwarding table using the new bridge command.
39
401. Create forwarding table entry
41 # bridge fdb add to 00:17:42:8a:b4:05 dst 192.19.0.2 dev vxlan0
42
432. Delete forwarding table entry
Zhi Yong Wucc9b3102012-11-22 00:10:01 +000044 # bridge fdb delete 00:17:42:8a:b4:05 dev vxlan0
stephen hemmingerd3428942012-10-01 12:32:35 +000045
463. Show forwarding table
47 # bridge fdb show dev vxlan0