Why lateral connectivity not allowed in Cisco ACI?

[AshSe]

Why lateral connectivity not allowed in Cisco ACI? Rest assured we don't have L2 or L3 loops. Expecting deep insight into why Spine to Spine and Leaf to Leaf connectivity not allowed.

Guys you may avoid stereo type responses.

[RedNectar]

Hi @AshSe ,

Cisco ACI is based on a scalable topology created and documented by Charles Clos in ($) The Bell System Technical Journal (Volume: 32, Issue: 2, March 1953) and also described (for free) on wikipedia

Read the Wikipedia article for the "deep insight" you seek - or better still, buy the original paper.

The central theme is that the design of the topology needs to be non-blocking, and introducing cross links (like leaf-to-leaf) makes re-routing traffic around a failed (e.g. leaf-to-leaf) link in a non-blocking way extremely difficult.  By restricting flows to the Clos topology, this situation is avoided.

[AshSe]

The first link is a paid resource, while the second link appears to be more complicated. Could you please provide an article written in lucid language?

[RedNectar]

Hi @AshSe ,

If you want "deep insight" I think the Wikipedia article is as lucid as you are going to find.

For a simpler explanation, try copy-paste the wikipedia article into an AI machine and as it to simplify.