Mad; Irf Domain Id; Irf Split - HP FlexFabric 5700 series Configuration Manual

MAD

An IRF link failure causes an IRF fabric to split in two IRF fabrics operating with the same Layer 3 settings,
including the same IP address. To avoid IP address collision and network problems, IRF uses multi-active
detection (MAD) mechanisms to detect the presence of multiple identical IRF fabrics, handle collisions,
and recover from faults.

IRF domain ID

One IRF fabric forms one IRF domain. IRF uses IRF domain IDs to uniquely identify IRF fabrics and prevent
IRF fabrics from interfering with one another.
As shown in
and Device D. Both fabrics use the LACP aggregate links between them for MAD. When a member
device receives an extended LACPDU for MAD, it checks the domain ID to see whether the packet is from
the local IRF fabric. Then, the device can handle the packet correctly.
Figure 2 A network that contains two IRF domains

IRF split

IRF split occurs when an IRF fabric breaks up into multiple IRF fabrics because of IRF link failures, as
shown in Figure
forwarding problems on the network. To quickly detect a multi-active collision, configure a minimum of
one MAD mechanism (see
Figure 2, IRF fabric 1 contains Device A and Device B, and IRF fabric 2 contains Device C
3. The split IRF fabrics operate with the same IP address. IRF split causes routing and
"Configuring MAD").
3