A municipal pod is approaching hardware TCAM limits for distinct ECMP groups as more spines and prefixes are added. What IP fabric scaling constraint should the team treat as first-class in the design?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
Short Explanation
ECMP groups are like reserved parking lanes in silicon—once the garage’s painted spots (TCAM/FIB) are full, you cannot keep inventing new multipath sets. Hardware scale limits are a real Clos design constraint, not something keepalive timers or DNS will magic away.
Full Explanation
Leaf and spine ASICs have finite FIB and ECMP-group resources. Growing spines, prefixes, and unique multipath sets can exhaust those resources even when BGP itself still converges. Designers must account for hardware ECMP/FIB scale when sizing pods. DNS caching, BGP timers, and access VLAN counts do not remove ASIC ECMP-group limits.