Design review for a new municipal Clos insists on symmetric leaf-to-spine cabling and clearly labeled ports. Why is that an IP fabric best practice?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
Short Explanation
If half the leaves have three uplinks and half have five with mystery patch cords, ECMP stops being a clean recipe and ops turns into a treasure hunt. Symmetric, labeled fabric cabling keeps Clos behavior boring—in a good way.
Full Explanation
Clos IP fabrics assume regular leaf-spine connectivity so ECMP hashing and capacity planning remain predictable. Symmetric cabling and clear labeling reduce human error during moves/adds/changes and incident response. Asymmetry and unlabeled uplinks complicate operations and can create uneven multipath sets.