OTV Transport: Multicast or Unicast

[cedar_lee]

(Moved this post from Data Center community to Network Infrastructure community as no reply from DC community after a week.)

Hello OTV Experts,

Except for the scalability, is OTV with unicast transport the same as the one with multicast?

In another words, any functions are supported by OTV with multicast transport only? Or vice versa.

Thanks,
Cedar

[Aries Fernandes]

Hi Cedar,

OTV unicast is preferable when you have small number of sites, and in unicast mode the Overlay interface number should be the same throughout. This condition does not hold in case of multicast mode.

Apart from the above, there are no functions that are different between unicast and multicast modes of OTV.

However, you should remember for multicast-mode OTV, the core should be multicast aware.

Let us know if you have any further questions related to OTV.

Thanks & Regards,

Aries

[cedar_lee]

Thanks Aries.

I am thinking of the some new features, like tunnel depolarization with secondary IP, loopback join-interface, and etc, will be supported by multicast mode only for a while. 

And in the future, maybe it will continue the same way, ie new features are always supported by multicast mode first.

Thanks

Cedar