SIGNALING ALIASING CAPABILITY IN DATA CENTERS

Techniques are described for signaling aliasing capability between routers in a multi-tenant data center that uses VPNs, such as Ethernet VPNs. In the multi-tenant data center, two or more PE routers may be connected to a CE router by a multi-homed L2 segment in an all-active mode. Aliasing refers to the ability of a PE router to signal that it can reach a given multi-homed L2 segment even when the PE router has learned no MAC addresses over that multi-homed L2 segment. The PE routers on the multi-homed L2 segment advertise aliasing capability using a route advertisement on a per-L2 segment basis. When the multi-tenant data center uses global VPN identifiers, no additional information is needed by a remote PE to build an ECMP next hop to the PE routers that support aliasing, and transmission of a route advertisement on a per-VPN basis may be suppressed.