Cisco and VMware demonstrated Virtual Extensible Local Area Network (VXLAN), a new technology which the companies are positioning as "the next major step in the path towards logical, virtual networks that can be created on-demand."
Cisco says VXLAN will scale to meet the millions of logical networks required to run applications in the cloud with efficient utilization of network resources. This compares with existing IEEE 802.1Q VLANs which use a 12-bit VLAN identifier, which hinders the scalability of cloud networks beyond 4K VLANs. VXLAN will offer a network encapsulation technique with segment identifiers for creating millions of logical networks. This is accomplished using a MAC in User Datagram Protocol (MAC-in-UDP) encapsulation technique.
VXLAN will also support applications running in hybrid clouds where compute capacity is delivered from pools of resources that may span across private and public clouds.
The demonstration occurred at this week's VMworld 2011 show in Las Vegas.
- Multiple other vendors are also supporting VXLAN, which has been submitted for standardization at Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). A draft of the VXLAN specification is available on the IETF site.
