EVPN – One Control Plane to Rule Them All#

Patrick Prangl (Arista Networks)

• Why: EVPN is the de facto control plane for modern physical DC fabrics (VXLAN overlays, multi-dimensional ECMP, integrated bridging/routing) — directly in the PM's physical DC networking core. The "one control plane" framing speaks to a live operational debate: collapsing L2/L3/overlay/underlay services onto a single BGP-based control plane instead of stitching VLANs + IGP + separate overlay signaling.
• What: A position/tutorial-style talk arguing for EVPN as the unified control plane across datacenter (and possibly WAN) services, per the title and the speaker's vendor affiliation (program text only).
• How: Unknown from the program; expect BGP EVPN route types, VXLAN overlay with an underlay, and EVPN's L2/L3 service models (E-LAN/E-Tree, IRB) as the framing.
• Where applicable: Applicable to any multi-tenant or leaf-spine DC being designed or refreshed. Caveat: the speaker is from Arista, so treat this as a vendor-lensed architectural pitch — worth watching for the conceptual argument (consolidated control plane, one failure domain to reason about), not for vendor-neutral tradeoffs.