SDN traffic¶

SDN or OpenContrail traffic goes through the overlay Data network and processes east-west and north-south traffic for applications that run in an MCP cluster. This network segment typically contains tenant networks as separate MPLS over GRE and MPLS over UDP tunnels. The traffic load depends on workload.

The control traffic between OpenContrail controllers, edge routers, and vRouters use iBGP and XMPP protocols. Both protocols produce low traffic which does not affect the MPLS over GRE and MPLS over UDP traffic. However, this traffic is critical and must be reliably delivered. Mirantis recommends configuring higher QoS for this type of traffic.

The following diagram displays both MPLS over GRE/MPLS over UDP and iBGP and XMPP traffic examples in an MCP cluster: