HP Enterprise HPE 5800 Switch Series, Configuration Manual

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For two neighboring devices, their IRF physical links must be bound to IRF-port 1 on one device and
to IRF-port 2 on the other.
Physical IRF port
Physical IRF ports connect IRF member devices and must be bound to an IRF port. They forward
IRF protocol packets between IRF member devices and data packets that must travel across IRF
member devices.
For more information about physical ports that can be used for IRF links, see " General restrictions
and configuration guidelines ."
IRF domain ID
One IRF fabric forms one IRF domain. IRF uses IRF domain IDs to uniquely identify IRF fabrics and
prevent IRF fabrics from interfering with one another.
As shown in Figure 2 , Switch A and Switch B form IRF fabric 1, and Switch C and Switch D form IRF
fabric 2. The fabrics have LACP MAD detection links between them. When a member switch
receives an extended LACPDU for MAD, it checks the domain ID to see whether the packet is from
the local IRF fabric. Then, the switch can handle the packet correctly.
Figure 2 A network that contains two IRF domains
IRF split
IRF split occurs when an IRF fabric breaks up into two or more IRF fabrics because of IRF link
failures, as shown in
Figure 3 . The split IRF fabrics operate with the same IP address and cause
routing and forwarding problems on the network. To quickly detect a multi-active collision, configure
at least one MAD mechanisms (see "
IRF multi-active detection ").