Features & Protocols
Hedgehog SONiC supports leaf, spine, and border-spine switching roles in Layer-3 data center fabrics with basic Layer-2 VLANs. Hedgehog continuously tests these features on certified devices through the life of the release. If you encounter any problem with any Hedgehog SONiC release or require a new feature not in the current Hedgehog SONiC release, please open a Support Ticket.
| Feature | Hedgehog Supported | Group | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| IEEE 802.1AB Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP) |  |
Layer-2 Switching | Link Layer Discovery Protocol (LLDP) is a layer 2 neighbor discovery protocol that allows devices to advertise device information to their directly connected peers/neighbors. |
| IEEE 802.1p Class-of-Service Prioritization and tagging | |
Layer-2 Switching | Class of service (COS or CoS) is a parameter used in data and voice protocols to differentiate the types of payloads contained in the packet being transmitted. The objective of such differentiation is generally associated with assigning priorities to the data payload or access levels to the telephone call. |
| IEEE 802.1Q Virtual LAN (VLAN) Tagging | |
Layer-2 Switching | IEEE 802.1Q, often referred to as Dot1q, is the networking standard that supports virtual local area networking (VLANs) on an IEEE 802.3 Ethernet network. |
| IEEE 802.1v VLAN Classification by Protocol | |
Layer-2 Switching | 802.1v enables classification of individual protocols onto specific VLAN IDs |
| IEEE 802.3x Flow Control (Pause Frames) | |
Layer-2 Switching | 802.3x is a simple flow control mechanism for ethernet that allows for basic QoS at Layer-2 |
| IEEE 802.3z 1000BASE-X | |
Layer-2 Switching | 802.3z enables support of gigabit speed signaling on ethernet networks |
| Large (> 9200) MTU support | |
Layer-2 Switching | Jumbo Frames are typically required for encapsulated protocols and storage transfer protocols |
| 64-Way Equal-cost Multi-path (ECMP) | |
Layer-3 Routing | ECMP enables basic load balancing across equal cost Layer-3 routed links. This is a simple way of utilizing redundant links in a Leaf-Spine Clos fabric. |
| Anycast gateways | |
Layer-3 Routing | Anycast gateways enable multiple points of egress from "stretched" Layer-2 VLANs. They are typically used in VXLANs to minimize traffic tromboning. |
| BGP Peer Auto-shutdown | |
Layer-3 Routing | Auto-shutdown puts new BGP peers into a shutdown state to eliminate temporary convergence issues when configuring new BGP peers. |
| BGP Route policies | |
Layer-3 Routing | BGP route policies allow for setting specific metrics for ACL classified traffic. This can be used for more complex routing designs where certain traffic needs to be handled differently. |
| BGP Route Reflector | |
Layer-3 Routing | BGP route reflectors are used to simplify routing topologies by eliminating the need for full-mesh peering. This can cut down on CPU/memory consumption in routers. |
| BGP unnumbered | |
Layer-3 Routing | BGP unnumbered eliminates the need for statically configured BGP peers by using IPv6 link-local address capabilities. |
| BGP-Allow Autonomous System (AS) | |
Layer-3 Routing | BGP-Allow AS is a filtering mechanism for controlling AS-Path information in routes |
| Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD) (Single & Multihop) | |
Layer-3 Routing | BFD is a method for detecting failed links and misconfigured neighbors to eliminate traffic blackholing scenarios. |
| DHCP relay from IP VRF | |
Layer-3 Routing | Allows for DHCP relay from isolated VRFs |
| DHCP relay sourced from loopback IP | |
Layer-3 Routing | Sends the DHCP forwarded packets with a source IP address of the router's loopback interface |
| Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) Relay | |
Layer-3 Routing | Provides IP addressing for hosts on an IP network |
| eBGP (v4 & v6) | |
Layer-3 Routing | External BGP is used for sharing route updates with devices managed by an external entity. eBGP can also be used for data center routing. |
| iBGP (v4 & v6) | |
Layer-3 Routing | Internal BGP simplifies BGP configuration within an AS that is controlled by a single entity. |
| Internet Control Message | |
Layer-3 Routing | ICMP enables ping packets to detect the availability of nodes on an IP network. |
| IPv4 ACL | |
Layer-3 Routing | Access Control Lists allow for classification and filtering of Layer-3 IPv4 traffic. |
| IPv4 unnumbered interfaces | |
Layer-3 Routing | Eliminates the need for IPv4 addresses on point-to-point links and helps to minimize IP address consumption |
| IPv4/IPv6 Dual Stack | |
Layer-3 Routing | Allows for IPv4 and IPv6 to coexist on the same routed network and supports translation between both addressing types. |
| IPv6 routing | |
Layer-3 Routing | IP packet routing for IPv6 address space |
| L2 and L3 VxLAN Symmetric and Asymmetric | |
Layer-3 Routing | Layer-2 switching and Layer-3 routing of VXLAN encapsulated packets which is typically used within a data center leaf-spine fabric. |
| Layer 3 Access Control Lists (ACL) | |
Layer-3 Routing | Classification and filtering capabilities for IP packets |
| Open Shortest Path First (OSPFv2) | |
Layer-3 Routing | OSPF is a link-state protocol that uses interface speeds to determine the ideal routing path. OSPF is a dynamic protocol that uses Link State Advertisements on a broadcast network to establish neighbor relationships. |
| Static Routes | |
Layer-3 Routing | Static configuration of a routing policy. |
| Virtual Routing and Forwarding (VRF) Lite | |
Layer-3 Routing | VRFs support segmentation of a router into multiple tables to enable "ships-in-the-night" separation of IP packet flows. |
| Wire-speed routing for IPv4 and IPv6 | |
Layer-3 Routing | Full speed non-blocking forwarding of IP packets at wire speeds. |
| IPv4/IPv6 management | |
Management | Individual device management via IPv4 or IPv6 addresses. |
| Management Access Control Lists (ACL) | |
Management | ACLs to determine what hosts can connect to the management protocols on network devices. Typically set to support only NOC/admin subnets. |
| Management Framework Command Line Interface (CLI) | |
Management | CLI is an interface that allows for the quick configuration of all of a devices supported features in a modal config manner. |
| Network Time Protocol (NTP) Client and Server | |
Management | NTP enables synchronization of clocks across a network. |
| OpenConfig data models | |
Management | OpenConfig is a non-proprietary configuration standard to eliminate vendor-specific config syntax. |
| P4 Integrated Network Stack (PINS) | |
Management | P4 is a flow programming mechanism used in SDN network to steer traffic into virtual network functions (VNFs) for additional services. |
| Programmatic Interfaces: REST and gNMI | |
Management | API based programming of network devices outside of the interactive CLI. |
| Secure Socket Shell (SSH)/SSHv2 • Role-based Access Control (RBAC) | |
Management | SSH w/ RBAC allows for individual user access to a network device over a secured IP tunnel. |
| Zero-touch Provisioning (ZTP) | |
Management | ZTP supports configuration of a device during first-boot without an administrator needing to put basic config on the equipment. |
| L2/L3/L4 ACL Support on data plane interfaces | |
Security | ACLs on data plane interfaces allows for packet filtering on a full IP tuple irrespective of the packet crossing a Layer-3 boundary. Useful for ingress filtering in a fabric. |
| SSH authentication w/ key support | |
Security | Secure shell communication via shared keys and no user password. |
| SFP interfaces configureable as 10G/25G on per port basis | |
Optical | High speed switch ports can be configured to operate at lower signaling speeds. |
| Dual stack support on all monitoring/management features | |
Monitoring | All management protocols can be accessed via IPv4 or IPv6. |
| Everflow/ERSPAN | |
Monitoring | Mirrors all packets through an interface to an external collection device for protocol analysis. |
| Remote syslog (UDP) | |
Monitoring | Sends syslog messages to an external collector. |
| sFlow | |
Monitoring | Flow accounting information can be sent to external collectors for monitoring and accounting purposes. |
| sFlow export w/ adaptive and configurable sampling rate | |
Monitoring | Granular controls for flow accounting to provide sample-based time series reporting. |
| SNMPv3 - basic interface & hw monitoring | |
Monitoring | Simple Network Monitoring Protocol is a legacy monitoring technology that uses a local database to store data about the state of a network device including all of traffic statistics. |
| SNMPv3 MIBs for routing protocols | |
Monitoring | SNMP MIBs store routing tables so remote management tools can analyze the routing topology. |
| SNMPv3 support for digital optics monitoring (DOM) | |
Monitoring | SNMP DOM stores information on optical performance for SFP/SFP+/QSFP pluggables. |
| Streaming telemetry via gNMI | |
Monitoring | gNMI supports streaming of granular telemetry to an external collector. |
| Visibility into (e.g. Broadcom) TCAM consumption | |
Monitoring | Low level ASIC reporting on Content Addressable Memory (CAM) utilization. |
| Ansible & Salt agent support | |
Programmability | Remote device automation tools such as Ansible and Salt allow for configuration of large number of devices at once. |
| YANG/OpenConfig + gNMI/gRPC Support | |
Programmability | These formats and protocols support non-proprietary configuration syntax and vendor-agnostic telemetry streaming to remote collection devices. |