SWITCH CLUSTERS HAVING LAYER-3 DISTRIBUTED ROUTER FUNCTIONALITY

摘要

According to one embodiment, Layer-3 (L3) distributed router functionality is provided to a switch cluster by receiving an address resolution protocol (ARP) request packet from a first host at an entry switch in a switch cluster, a switch controller being in communication with the entry switch, and the ARP request packet including a virtual router IP address of the switch controller as a target, forwarding the ARP request packet to the switch controller after adding a header that adheres to a communication protocol used by the switch controller, receiving an ARP response packet from the switch controller indicating: a source IP address corresponding to a virtual router of the switch controller and a SMAC corresponding to the switch controller, forwarding the ARP response packet to the first host after stripping the communication protocol header, and setting the virtual router as a default gateway for traffic received from the first host.