Skip to content

VXLAN EVPN: A Deep Dive into Packet Forwarding - BRKDCN-3966#

Cisco Live Europe 2025 (Amsterdam) digest Program Core pick Amsterdam · 9–14 February 2025

Abstract

Speakers: Lukas Krattiger (Cisco)

  • Why: Pure dataplane-internals material — exactly the kind of "what actually happens in the silicon" session the PM values. Krattiger's deep dives are typically among the most technically dense Cisco Live breakouts.
  • What: A packet-by-packet walkthrough of VXLAN EVPN forwarding: how bridging and routing work, how multi-destination (BUM) traffic is handled, and what happens from ingress VTEP through the underlay to egress VTEP and beyond. (from abstract only)
  • How: Follows a single packet's life through VTEP encapsulation, ARP/suppression behavior, routing between VNIs, and multicast/ingress-replication handling of broadcast traffic — the mechanics that determine real-world behavior such as asymmetric vs. symmetric IRB and head-end replication scaling.
  • Where applicable: NX-OS standalone VXLAN EVPN (the session is a companion to the multi-site talk below). The forwarding concepts are generic to any VXLAN EVPN fabric, though implementation details (e.g., specific replication modes) are Cisco-specific.