If you are using the current version of Cumulus Linux, the content on this page may not be up to date. The current version of the documentation is available here. If you are redirected to the main page of the user guide, then this page may have been renamed; please search for it there.

Supported Route Table Entries

Cumulus Linux advertises the maximum number of route table entries supported on the switch, including:

  • Layer 3 IPv4 LPM entries that have a mask less than /32
  • Layer 3 IPv6 LPM entries that have a mask of /64 or less
  • Layer 3 IPv6 LPM entries that have a mask greater than /64
  • Layer 3 IPv4 neighbor (or host) entries that are the next hops seen in ip neighbor
  • Layer 3 IPv6 neighbor entries that are the next hops seen in ip -6 neighbor
  • ECMP next hops, which are IP address entries in the routing table that specify the next closest or most optimal router in its routing path
  • MAC addresses

To determine the current table sizes on a switch, use cl-resource-query.

Supported Route Entries

Cumulus Linux provides several generalized profiles, described below. These profiles work only with layer 2 and layer 3 unicast forwarding.

The following tables list the number of MAC addresses, layer 3 neighbors, and LPM routes validated for each forwarding table profile. If you do not specify any profiles as described below, the switch uses the default values.

The values provided in the profiles below are the maximum values that Cumulus Linux software allocates; the theoretical hardware limits might be higher. These limits refer to values that have been validated as part of the unidimensional scale validation. If you try to achieve maximum scalability with multiple features enabled, results might differ from the values listed in this guide.

Spectrum 1

Profile
MAC Addresses
Layer 3 Neighbors
LPM
default 40k 32k (IPv4) and 16k (IPv6) 64k (IPv4) and 28k (IPv6-long)
l2-heavy 88k 48k (IPv4) and 40k (IPv6) 8k (IPv4) and 8k (IPv6-long)
l2-heavy-1 180K 8k (IPv4) and 8k (IPv6) 8k (IPv4) and 8k (IPv6-long)
v4-lpm-heavy 8k 8k (IPv4) and 16k (IPv6) 80k (IPv4) and 16k (IPv6-long)
v4-lpm-heavy-1 8k 8k (IPv4) and 2k (IPv6) 176k (IPv4) and 2k (IPv6-long)
v6-lpm-heavy 40k 8k (IPv4) and 40k (IPv6) 8k (IPv4), 32k (IPv6-long) and 32K (IPv6/64)
lpm-balanced 8k 8k (IPv4) and 8k (IPv6) 60k (IPv4), 60k (IPv6-long) and 120k (IPv6/64)

Spectrum-2 and Later

Profile
MAC Addresses
Layer 3 Neighbors
LPM
default 50k 41k (IPv4) and 20k (IPv6) 82k (IPv4), 74k (IPv6-long), 1K (IPv4-Mcast)
l2-heavy 115k 74k (IPv4) and 37k (IPv6) 16k (IPv4), 24k (IPv6-long), 1K (IPv4-Mcast)
l2-heavy-1 239K 16k (IPv4) and 12k (IPv6) 16k (IPv4), 16k (IPv6-long), 1K (IPv4-Mcast)
l2-heavy-3 107k 90k (IPv4) and 80k (IPv6) 25k (IPv4), 10k (IPv6-long), 1K (IPv4-Mcast)
v4-lpm-heavy 16k 41k (IPv4) and 24k (IPv6) 124k (IPv4), 24k (IPv6-long), 1K (IPv4-Mcast)
v4-lpm-heavy-1 16k 16k (IPv4) and 4k (IPv6) 256k (IPv4), 8k (IPv6-long), 1K (IPv4-Mcast)
v6-lpm-heavy 16k 16k (IPv4) and 62k (IPv6) 16k (IPv4), 99k (IPv6-long), 1K (IPv4-Mcast)
v6-lpm-heavy-1 5k 4k (IPv4) and 4k (IPv6) 90k (IPv4), 235k (IPv6-long), 1K (IPv4-Mcast)
lpm-balanced 16k 16k (IPv4) and 12k (IPv6) 124k (IPv4), 124k (IPv6-long), 1K (IPv4-Mcast)
ipmc-heavy 57k 41k (IPv4) and 20k (IPv6) 82K (IPv4), 66K (IPv6-long), 8K (IPv4-Mcast)
ipmc-max 41K 41k (IPv4) and 20k (IPv6) 74K (IPv4), 66K (IPv6-long), 15K (IPv4-Mcast)

The IPv6 number corresponds to the /64 IPv6 prefix. The /128 IPv6 prefix number is half of the /64 IPv6 prefix number.

For the ipmc-max profile, the cl-resource-query command output displays 33K instead of 15K as the maximum number of IPv4 multicast routes in switchd. 15K is the supported and validated value. You can use the higher value of 33K to test higher multicast scale in non-production environments.

Change Forwarding Resource Profiles

You can set the profile that best suits your network architecture.

Run the nv set system forwarding profile <profile-name> command to specify the profile you want to use.

The following example command sets the l2-heavy profile:

cumulus@switch:~$ nv set system forwarding profile l2-heavy 
cumulus@switch:~$ nv config apply

To set the profile back to the default:

cumulus@switch:~$ nv unset system forwarding profile l2-heavy 
cumulus@switch:~$ nv config apply

Instead of the above command, you can run the nv set system forwarding profile default command to set the profile back to the default.

Specify the profile you want to use with the forwarding_table.profile variable in the /etc/cumulus/datapath/traffic.conf file. The following example specifies l2-heavy:

cumulus@switch:~$ sudo cat /etc/cumulus/datapath/traffic.conf
...
forwarding_table.profile = l2-heavy

After you specify a different profile, restart switchd for the change to take effect.

To show the different forwarding profiles that your switch supports and the MAC address, layer 3 neighbor, and LPM scale availability for each forwarding profile, run the nv show system forwarding profile-option command.

TCAM Profiles - Spectrum 1

Specify the profile you want to use with the tcam_resource.profile variable in the /etc/mlx/datapath/tcam_profile.conf file. The following example specifies ipmc-max:

cumulus@switch:~$ cat /etc/mlx/datapath/tcam_profile.conf
...
tcam_resource.profile = ipmc-max

After you specify a different profile, restart switchd for the change to take effect.

When you enable nonatomic updates (acl.non_atomic_update_mode is TRUE in the /etc/cumulus/switchd.conf file), the maximum number of mroute and ACL entries for each profile are:

Profile Mroute Entries ACL Entries
default 1000 500 (IPv6) or 1000 (IPv4)
ipmc-heavy 8500 1000 (IPv6) or 1500 (IPv4)
acl-heavy 450 2000 (IPv6) or 3500 (IPv4)
ipmc-max 13000 1000 (IPv6) or 2000 (IPv4)

When you disable nonatomic updates (acl.non_atomic_update_mode is FALSE in the /etc/cumulus/switchd.conf file), the maximum number of mroute and ACL entries for each profile are:

Profile Mroute Entries ACL Entries
default 1000 250 (IPv6) or 500 (IPv4)
ipmc-heavy 8500 500 (IPv6) or 750 (IPv4)
acl-heavy 450 1000 (IPv6) or 1750 (IPv4)
ipmc-max 13000 500 (IPv6) or 1000 (IPv4)