A Linux host as a PE router: layer 2 over an SRv6 VPN
Turning a Linux host into a provider edge router: network namespaces, an SRv6 L3VPN, and an EVPN/VXLAN layer 2 segment carried across it, with the packet traced layer by layer.
Michael Zamot
Principal Consultant & Telecommunications Infrastructure Architect
Exploring open-source infrastructure, networking, automation, and the engineering challenges behind large-scale systems.
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L3VPN over SRv6: separate customer networks on one backbone
How a BGP L3VPN works over SRv6: VRFs, route distinguishers and targets, service SIDs carried in BGP, and customer traffic tunneled across a plain IPv6 core.
SRv6: segment routing over IPv6
How SRv6 works: segments as IPv6 addresses, locators and SIDs, the segment routing header, endpoint behaviors, and compressed segment lists, shown on plain Linux routers.
Network namespaces and VRFs: separate routing on one Linux host
How Linux keeps routing separate on one machine: VRFs for separate routing tables, network namespaces for separate network stacks, and veth pairs to connect them.
EVPN: a BGP control plane for VXLAN
How BGP EVPN works: route types, VTEP discovery and MAC advertisement, and how it replaces static flood lists and learning from traffic in a VXLAN network.
About Me
I'm a Principal Consultant and Telco Architect at Red Hat, with over 15 years of experience in Linux, networking, virtualization, automation, and open-source infrastructure. I'm a strong advocate for open-source technologies and the freedom, flexibility, and innovation they bring to enterprise computing.
My work spans infrastructure architecture, performance optimization, and massive-scale deployments, particularly in telecommunications environments. My experience includes high-performance networking, SR-IOV, DPDK, BGP, SRv6, NUMA, real-time Linux, OpenStack, Kubernetes, and OpenShift, as well as large-scale VMware migrations to open-source virtualization alternatives and automation across thousands of nodes.
Beyond hands-on engineering, I provide technical leadership, mentor engineers, and lead complex architectural discussions, workshops, and technical discovery sessions with customers. I also enjoy sharing knowledge through tutorials, technical publications, and conference presentations, including contributions to Opensource.com, DevConf, and Red Hat's Expert Extras.
Above all, I'm an engineer at heart and an open-source enthusiast. I enjoy solving difficult problems, understanding how systems work, and exploring new technologies, from distributed infrastructure to AI and GPU computing.
opencloud.io is my personal space to share knowledge, document experiences, and explore the technologies and engineering challenges that interest me.
The views expressed here are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.