Reference Guide

88 | 802.1ag
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Maintenance End Points
A Maintenance End Point (MEP) is a logical entity that marks the end-point of a domain. There are two
types of MEPs defined in 802.1ag for an 802.1 bridge:
• Up-MEP: monitors the forwarding path internal to an bridge on the customer or provider edge; on
Dell Networking systems the internal forwarding path is effectively the switch fabric and forwarding
engine.
• Down-MEP: monitors the forwarding path external to another bridge.
Configure Up- MEPs on ingress ports, ports that send traffic towards the bridge relay. Configure
Down-MEPs on egress ports, ports that send traffic away from the bridge relay.
Figure 5-3. Up-MEP versus Down-MEP
Implementation Information
• Since the S5000 has a single MAC address for all physical/LAG interfaces, only one MEP is allowed
per MA (per VLAN or per MD level).
Configuring CFM
Configuring CFM is a five-step process:
1. Configure the ecfmacl CAM region using the
cam-acl command. Refer to User-Configurable CAM
Allocation.
2. Enabling Ethernet CFM.
3. Creating a Maintenance Domain.
4. Creating a Maintenance Association.
5. Creating Maintenance Points.
6. Use CFM tools:
Customer Network
Service Provider Ethernet Access
towards relay
away from relay
Up-MEP
Down-MEP