Switch Port Extender and IP Multicast

In a Campus Fabric, or Switch Port Extender (SPX), configuration, forwarding decisions always occur in the Control Bridge (CB) units, even for traffic that ingresses on a Port Extender (PE) port.

In the upstream direction (from a PE to a CB), the packets are tagged with an E-Tag to identify the ingress PE port. In the downstream direction (from a CB to a PE), the packets are tagged with an E-Tag to identify the egress PE ports. E-channel identifiers (E-CIDs) contained in the E-Tag header are used to identify a single PE port or a set of PE ports.

Note: For details on SPX configuration and terminology, refer to the RUCKUS FastIron Campus Fabric Configuration Guide.

SNMP support

RUCKUS ICX 7650 or ICX 7750 devices can be used as the Control Bridge (CB) for an SPX system. PE units connected to the CB in a chain or ring can be ICX 7450, ICX 7250, ICX 7150 units, or a mix of these units.

Multicast E-CID and IEE 802.1BR

The point-to-multipoint E-channels used for remote replication are identified by an E-CID with a value in the range of 0x1000 to 0x3FFF (values less than this are reserved for E-CIDs associated with point-to-point E-channels).

In this section:

  1. Multicast E-CID Manager
    IEEE 802.1BR facilitates the use of multicast E-CIDs (point-to-multipoint) for replication of multicast packets by PE units.
  2. Considerations for Multicast Forwarding on PE Units
  3. Layer 2 Multicast in an SPX Configuration
    Layer 2 multicast traffic forwarding behaves differently in an SPX stack configuration.
  4. Layer 3 Multicast in an SPX Configuration
    In a Layer 3 multicast SPX stacking configuration, Layer 3 forwarding lookup for the traffic that ingresses on a PE port is always performed in the CB.
  5. Displaying Multicast SPX Information
    You can view ME-CID topology and summary information using a variety of show commands.
Parent topic: IP Multicast Switch Port Extender Systems