WHAT TO EXPECT
In this article, users will learn how swXtchBridge works and how it can be used to send traffic between an on-prem facility and a cloud.
swXtchBridge
The swXtchBridge application enables bi-directional multicast traffic between a non-cloud and cloud network. The source network can be bare-metal and on-premises. The destination network can be a cloud virtual network with a cloudSwXtch instance deployed. With cloudSwXtch, multicast traffic generated from the on-prem network can be received and processed in the cloud, which then, in turn, can be sent back to the on-prem network. The traffic can be lossless thanks to swXtch Lossless Protocol (SLP), so no packet will be lost during the transmission.
The swXtchBridge is bi-directional, sending and receiving multicast traffic to and from the on-prem network to the cloud
From on-prem to the cloud, the bridge is dynamic. This means that users in the cloud can subscribe to a multicast group via IGMP joins. Then, the bridge will allow that traffic through. This ensures that only necessary traffic goes through the VPN or Express Route/Gateway into the cloud. It guarantees the best use of the gateway and incurs less ingress bandwidth into the cloud.
Operation
The operation of the swXtchBridge varies based on the direction and the devices available in the on-prem network.
Ground to Cloud (G2C)
For Ground to Cloud, the operation is dynamic, meaning the user does not need to map multicast addresses to go into the cloud. Instead, when a user is in an application and uses an IGMP join, then a message is sent to the swXtchBridge via the cloudSwXtch through the link, and then the swXtchBridge allows that traffic through. When the user stops using the multicast group and does an IGMP leave, then the bridge stops sending multicast data.
Cloud to Ground (C2G)
For Cloud to Ground, if the components of the network are interconnected using Arista/Juniper COTS switches, the IGMP messages will also be used automatically. If not, there is no current support to propagate IGMP joins and leaves from cloudSwXtch to on-prem, so multicast groups must be explicitly configured to let the bridge know what traffic is allowed.
See the Install swXtchBridge section on how to install the swXtchBridge and the requirements. If the user needs to use the High-Performance mode, check the supported NICs. Using this mode, the Bridge can achieve a higher throughput of more than 10 GB of traffic.