
SONiC Open Networking Software for Enterprise Data Center
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Network Definitions
VLAN – Virtual Local Area Network is a technique of isolating LANs based on the 802.1Q standard with a 16-bit protocol identifier tag and a 16-bit control information tag, which is broken further into a 12-bit VLAN identifier, 3-bit 802.1p-based priority code point, and 1-bit 802.1Q-based drop eligible indicator (indicating congestion). Leaf-and-Spine Network – It is a two-tiered tree-like structure, as shown in the Figure 2, with a leaf layer and a spine layer. One can think of the access and south-bound aggregation layers merging to become the leaf layer and the core and north-bound aggregation layers merging to become the spine layer. This is how a Data Center (DC) Network looks.