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Dell EMC Networking with Isilon Front-End Deployment and Best Practices Guide | version 1.0
Scaling out the existing networking topology
4.4
Layer 3 leaf-spine topology
In a layer 3 leaf-spine network, traffic between leafs and spines is routed. The layer 2/3 boundary is at the leaf
switches. Spine switches are never connected to each other in a layer 3 topology. Equal cost multi-path
routing (ECMP) is used to load balance traffic across the layer 3 network. Connections within racks from
hosts to leaf switches are layer 2. Connections to external networks are made from a pair of edge or border
leafs as shown in Figure 12.
Layer 3 leaf-spine network