RFC 7956 · PROPOSED STANDARD · 2016

Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links Distributed Layer 3 Gateway

Overview

RFC 7956, “Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links Distributed Layer 3 Gateway”, is a Proposed Standard document published in September 2016 by W. Hao, Y. Li, A. Qu, M. Durrani, P. Sivamurugan. The canonical text is published by the RFC Editor.

Abstract

The base TRILL (Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links) protocol provides optimal pair-wise data frame forwarding for Layer 2 intra-subnet traffic but not for Layer 3 inter-subnet traffic. A centralized gateway solution is typically used for Layer 3 inter-subnet traffic forwarding but has the following issues:

1. Sub-optimum forwarding paths for inter-subnet traffic.

2. A centralized gateway that may need to support a very large number of gateway interfaces in a Data Center, one per tenant per Data Label used by that tenant, to provide interconnect functionality for all the Layer 2 Virtual Networks in a TRILL campus.

3. A traffic bottleneck at the gateway.

This document specifies an optional TRILL distributed gateway solution that resolves these centralized gateway issues.

Abstract as published in the RFC, via rfc-editor.org.

What “Proposed Standard” means

An entry-level standards-track specification: stable, peer-reviewed and a solid basis for implementation, though it may still evolve before becoming an Internet Standard.

Read this RFC

The canonical text of RFC 7956 is hosted at rfc-editor.org. Available in TXT,HTML.

Other RFCs from 2016

Who Is Online

In total there are 34 users online: 0 registered, 28 guests and 6 bots.

Most users ever online was 1,226 on 13 Jun 2026, 3:56 am.

Bots: Applebot Baiduspider Bingbot Other Bot SemrushBot Sogou

Users active in the past 15 minutes. Total registered members: 354