RFC 9746: BGP EVPN Multihoming Extensions for Split-Horizon Filtering
Recent RFCs 2025-03-06
Summary:
An Ethernet Virtual Private Network (EVPN) is commonly used with
Network Virtualization Overlay (NVO) tunnels as well as with MPLS and
Segment Routing (SR) tunnels. The multihoming procedures in EVPN may
vary based on the type of tunnel used within the EVPN Broadcast
Domain. Specifically, there are two multihoming split-horizon
procedures designed to prevent looped frames on multihomed Customer
Edge (CE) devices: the Ethernet Segment Identifier (ESI) Label-based
procedure and the local-bias procedure. The ESI Label-based
split-horizon procedure is applied to MPLS-based tunnels such as MPLS
over UDP (MPLSoUDP), while the local-bias procedure is used for other
tunnels such as Virtual eXtensible Local Area Network (VXLAN)
tunnels.
Current specifications do not allow operators to choose which
split-horizon procedure to use for tunnel encapsulations that support
both methods. Examples of tunnels that may support both procedures
include MPLSoUDP, MPLS over GRE (MPLSoGRE), Generic Network
Virtualization Encapsulation (Geneve), and Segment Routing over IPv6
(SRv6) tunnels. This document updates the EVPN multihoming procedures
described in RFCs 7432 and 8365, enabling operators to select the
split-horizon procedure that meets their specific requirements.