Cisco Nexus 5500 Platform Layer 3 And Vpc Operations; Vpc And First Hop Redundancy Protocol - Cisco Nexus 5000 Series Operation Manual

S e n d d o c u m e n t a t i o n c o m m e n t s t o n 5 k d o c f e e d b a c k @ c i s c o . c o m
Cisco Nexus 5500 Platform Layer 3 and vPC
Operations
This chapter describes virtual port channel (vPC) operations when Layer 3 routing features are enabled
on the Cisco Nexus 5500 Platform.
This chapter includes the following sections:
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vPC and First Hop Redundancy Protocol

When you use a Cisco Nexus 5548 switch or Cisco Nexus 5596UP switch as a default gateway for hosts,
you can deploy the First Hop Redundancy Protocol (FHRP) to provide default gateway redundancy.
Beginning with Cisco NX-OS Release 5.0(3)N1(1b), an active FHRP peer and a standby peer can
perform Layer 3 forwarding when you enable vPC. This optimization improves bandwidth, avoids
sending the Layer 3 traffic over the vPC peer link, and requires no configuration or protocol change.
Only the FHRP active peer answers ARP requests. Because both active and standby FHRP peers can
forward Layer 3 traffic, you do not need to configure an aggressive timer for FHRP to provide faster
failover and convergence time if an active FHRP peer fails.
vPC and First Hop Redundancy Protocol, page 2-1
ARP Processing with vPC, page 2-2
Layer 3 Forwarding for Packets to a Peer Switch MAC Address, page 2-2
Improved Convergence with a vPC Topology and Layer 3 Routing, page 2-4
vPC Peer Link Failure, page 2-5
Layer 3 Module Failure, page 2-5
Connecting to a Router in a vPC Topology, page 2-6
Dedicated VRF For a Keepalive Interface, page 2-7
vPC Consistency Check for Layer 3 Parameters, page 2-9
Multicast Interaction in a vPC Topology, page 2-9
Faster Convergence with the Prebuilt Source Tree, page 2-10
Using a vPC Switch as a Designated Router (PIM DR), page 2-12
Software Upgrade and Downgrade Impact, page 2-14
Cisco Nexus 5000 Series NX-OS Interfaces Operations Guide, Release 5.0(3)N2(1)
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