Ethernet VPN (EVPN)

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EVPN, or Ethernet Virtual Private Network, is like a smart system that helps computers and devices in a network talk to each other better. It’s like having a super organized mail system where each computer has its own address, and EVPN makes sure messages get to the right place quickly and safely. So, it’s kind of like a traffic manager for information on a computer network, making everything run smoothly and securely.

ChatGPT trying (and failing) to explain EVPN

What Is EVPN?

Before going into the technical details, let’s start with the basics: What is EVPN, how does it work, and where can you use it?

EVPN Designs

EVPN was designed to be used in an IBGP environment on top of an IGP. With the eruption of EBGP as better IGP hype, many vendors tried to adapt EVPN to an environment running EBGP instead of OSPF. We covered some of the typical EVPN designs in these blog posts:

Other blog posts focus on various design details:

Finally, several blog posts describe various EVPN VPN topologies:

EVPN Implementation Details

There are tons of tiny little things that can go wrong when you try to deploy EVPN. I documented them as I stumbled upon them:

Beyond VXLAN

While EVPN is often used with VXLAN today, it was designed to work with the MPLS data plane, resulting in a few quirks:

EVPN Rants

Some vendors’ marketing engineers (or Senior Directors) can’t stand anyone telling them their implementation might be suboptimal, going to great lengths to prove to themselves they’re right, and generating beautiful fodder for rants.

Videos