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Understanding CoS Flow Control (Ethernet PAUSE and PFC)

Flow control supports lossless transmission by regulating traffic flows to avoid dropping frames during periods of congestion. Flow control stops and resumes the transmission of network traffic between two connected peer nodes on a full-duplex Ethernet physical link. Controlling the flow by pausing and restarting it prevents buffers on the nodes from overflowing and dropping frames. You configure flow control on a per-interface basis.

Two methods of peer-to-peer flow control are supported:

  • IEEE 802.3X Ethernet PAUSE

    Note:
    • QFX10000 switches do not support Ethernet PAUSE. Information about Ethernet PAUSE does not apply to QFX10000 switches.

    • On EX4400 switches, when a physical port receives pause frames, it terminates the received pause and generates a new pause frame to forward to the MAC. This process of terminating and generating pause frames results in incremented MAC counters in the interface statistics, although the port does not transmit any traffic. The input bytes statistics on the remote device interface is zero. This is expected behavior and ensures fast response to pause frame reception.

  • IEEE 802.1Qbb priority-based flow control (PFC)

    Note:

    QFX10002-60C devices do not support PFC and lossless queues; that is, the default lossless queues (fcoe and no-loss) will be lossy queues.

General Information about Ethernet PAUSE and PFC and When to Use Them

Ethernet PAUSE and PFC are link-level flow control mechanisms.

Note:

For end-to-end congestion control for best-effort traffic, see Understanding CoS Explicit Congestion Notification.

Ethernet PAUSE pauses transmission of all traffic on a physical Ethernet link.

PFC decouples the pause function from the physical Ethernet link and enables you to divide traffic on one link into eight priorities. You can think of the eight priorities as eight “lanes” of traffic that are mapped to forwarding classes and output queues. Each priority maps to a 3-bit IEEE 802.1p CoS code point value in the VLAN header. You can enable PFC on one or more priorities (IEEE 802.1p code points) on a link. When PFC-enabled traffic is paused on a link, traffic that is not PFC-enabled continues to flow (or is dropped if congestion is severe enough).

Use Ethernet PAUSE when you want to prevent packet loss on all of the traffic on a link. Use PFC to prevent traffic loss only on a specified type of traffic that require lossless treatment, for example, Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) traffic.

Note:

Depending on the amount of traffic on a link or assigned to a priority, pausing traffic can cause ingress port congestion and spread congestion through the network.

Ethernet PAUSE and PFC are mutually exclusive configurations on an interface. Attempting to configure both Ethernet PAUSE and PFC on a link causes a commit error.

By default, all forms of flow control are disabled. You must explicitly enable flow control on interfaces to pause traffic.

Ethernet PAUSE

Ethernet PAUSE is a congestion relief feature that works by providing link-level flow control for all traffic on a full-duplex Ethernet link. Ethernet PAUSE works in both directions on the link. In one direction, an interface generates and sends Ethernet PAUSE messages to stop the connected peer from sending more traffic. In the other direction, the interface responds to Ethernet PAUSE messages it receives from the connected peer to stop sending traffic.

Note:

QFX10000 switches do not support Ethernet PAUSE. Information about Ethernet PAUSE does not apply to QFX10000 switches.

Ethernet PAUSE also works on aggregated Ethernet interfaces. For example, if the connected peer interfaces are called Node A and Node B:

  • When the receive buffers on interface Node A reach a certain level of fullness, the interface generates and sends an Ethernet PAUSE message to the connected peer (interface Node B) to tell the peer to stop sending frames. The Node B buffers store frames until the time period specified in the Ethernet PAUSE frame elapses; then Node B resumes sending frames to Node A.

  • When interface Node A receives an Ethernet PAUSE message from interface Node B, interface Node A stops transmitting frames until the time period specified in the Ethernet PAUSE frame elapses; then Node A resumes transmission. (The Node A transmit buffers store frames until Node A resumes sending frames to Node B.)

    In this scenario, if Node B sends an Ethernet PAUSE frame with a time value of 0 to Node A, the 0 time value indicates to Node A that it can resume transmission. This happens when the Node B buffer empties to below a certain threshold and the buffer can once again accept traffic.

Symmetric flow control means an interface has the same Ethernet PAUSE configuration in both directions. The Ethernet PAUSE generation and Ethernet PAUSE response functions are both configured as enabled, or they are both disabled. You configure symmetric flow control by including the flow-control statement at the [edit interfaces interface-name ether-options] hierarchy level.

Asymmetric flow control allows you to configure the Ethernet PAUSE functionality in each direction independently on an interface. The configuration for generating Ethernet PAUSE messages and for responding to Ethernet PAUSE messages does not have to be the same. It can be enabled in both directions, disabled in both directions, or enabled in one direction and disabled in the other direction. You configure asymmetric flow control by including the configured-flow-control statement at the [edit interfaces interface-name ether-options] hierarchy level.

On any particular interface, symmetric and asymmetric flow control are mutually exclusive. Asymmetric flow control overrides and disables symmetric flow control. (If PFC is configured on an interface, you cannot commit an Ethernet PAUSE configuration on the interface. Attempting to commit an Ethernet PAUSE configuration on an interface with PFC enabled on one or more queues results in a commit error. To commit the PAUSE configuration, you must first delete the PFC configuration.) Both symmetric and asymmetric flow control are supported.

Symmetric Flow Control

Symmetric flow control configures both the receive and transmit buffers in the same state. The interface can both send Ethernet PAUSE messages and respond to them (flow control is enabled), or the interface cannot send Ethernet PAUSE messages or respond to them (flow control is disabled).

When you enable symmetric flow control on an interface, the Ethernet PAUSE behavior depends on the configuration of the connected peer. With symmetric flow control enabled, the interface can perform any Ethernet PAUSE functions that the connected peer can perform. (When symmetric flow control is disabled, the interface does not send or respond to Ethernet PAUSE messages.)

Asymmetric Flow Control

Asymmetric flow control enables you to specify independently whether or not the interface receive buffer generates and sends Ethernet PAUSE messages to stop the connected peer from transmitting traffic, and whether or not the interface transmit buffer responds to Ethernet PAUSE messages it receives from the connected peer and stops transmitting traffic. The receive buffer configuration determines if the interface transmits Ethernet PAUSE messages, and the transmit buffer configuration determines if the interface receives and responds to Ethernet PAUSE messages:

  • Receive buffers on—Enable Ethernet PAUSE transmission (generate and send Ethernet PAUSE frames)

  • Transmit buffers on—Enable Ethernet PAUSE reception (respond to received Ethernet PAUSE frames)

You must explicitly set the flow control for both the receive buffer and the transmit buffer (on or off) to configure asymmetric Ethernet PAUSE. Table 1 describes the configured flow control state when you set the receive (Rx) and transmit (Tx) buffers on an interface:

Table 1: Asymmetric Ethernet PAUSE Flow Control Configuration

Receive (Rx) Buffer

Transmit (Tx) Buffer

Configured Flow Control State

On

Off

Interface generates and sends Ethernet PAUSE messages. Interface does not respond to Ethernet PAUSE messages (interface continues to transmit even if peer requests that the interface stop sending traffic).

Off

On

Interface responds to Ethernet PAUSE messages received from the connected peer, but does not generate or send Ethernet PAUSE messages. (The interface does not request that the connected peer stop sending traffic.)

On

On

Same functionality as symmetric Ethernet PAUSE. Interface generates and sends Ethernet PAUSE messages and responds to received Ethernet PAUSE messages.

Off

Off

Ethernet PAUSE flow control is disabled.

The configured flow control is the Ethernet PAUSE state configured on the interface.

On 1-Gigabit Ethernet interfaces, autonegotiation of Ethernet PAUSE with the connected peer is supported. (Autonegotiation on 10-Gigabit Ethernet interfaces is not supported.) Autonegotiation enables the interface to exchange state advertisements with the connected peer so that the two devices can agree on the Ethernet PAUSE configuration. Each interface advertises its flow control state to the connected peer using a combination of the Ethernet PAUSE and ASM_DIR bits, as described in Table 2:

Table 2: Flow Control State Advertised to the Connected Peer (Autonegotiation)

Rx Buffer State

Tx Buffer State

PAUSE Bit

ASM_DIR Bit

Description

Off

Off

0

0

The interface advertises no Ethernet PAUSE capability. This is equivalent to disabling flow control on an interface.

On

On

1

0

The interface advertises symmetric flow control (both the transmission of Ethernet PAUSE messages and the ability to receive and respond to Ethernet PAUSE messages).

On

Off

0

1

The interface advertises asymmetric flow control (the transmission of Ethernet PAUSE messages, but not the ability to receive and respond to Ethernet PAUSE messages).

Off

On

1

1

The interface advertises both symmetric and asymmetric flow control. Although the interface does not generate and send Ethernet PAUSE requests to the peer, the interface supports both symmetric and asymmetric Ethernet PAUSE configuration on the peer because the peer is not affected if the peer does not receive Ethernet PAUSE requests. (If the interface responds to the peer’s Ethernet PAUSE requests, that is sufficient to support either symmetric or asymmetric flow control on the peer.)

The flow control configuration on each switch interface interacts with the flow control configuration of the connected peer. Each peer advertises its state to the other peer. The interaction of the flow control configuration of the peers determines the flow control behavior (resolution) between them, as shown in Table 3. The first four columns show the Ethernet PAUSE configuration on the local QFX Series or EX4600 switch and on the connected peer (also known as the link partner). The last two columns show the Ethernet PAUSE resolution that results from the local and peer configurations on each interface. This illustrates how the Ethernet PAUSE configuration of each interface affects the Ethernet PAUSE behavior on the other interface.

Note:

In the Resolution columns of the table, disabling Ethernet PAUSE transmit means that the interface receive buffers do not generate and send Ethernet PAUSE messages to the peer. Disabling Ethernet PAUSE receive means that the interface transmit buffers do not respond to Ethernet PAUSE messages received from the peer.

Table 3: Asymmetric Ethernet PAUSE Behavior on Local and Peer Interfaces

Local Interface (QFX Series or EX4600 Switch)

Peer Interface

Local Resolution

Peer Resolution

PAUSE Bit

ASM_DIR Bit

PAUSE Bit

ASM_DIR Bit

0

0

Don’t care

Don’t care

Disable Ethernet PAUSE transmit and receive

Disable Ethernet PAUSE transmit and receive

0

1

0

Don’t care

Disable Ethernet PAUSE transmit and receive

Disable Ethernet PAUSE transmit and receive

0

1

1

0

Disable Ethernet PAUSE transmit and receive

Disable Ethernet PAUSE transmit and receive

0

1

1

1

Enable Ethernet PAUSE transmit and disable Ethernet PAUSE receive

Disable Ethernet PAUSE transmit and enable Ethernet PAUSE receive

1

0

0

Don’t care

Disable Ethernet PAUSE transmit and receive

Disable Ethernet PAUSE transmit and receive

1

0

1

Don’t care

Enable Ethernet PAUSE transmit and receive

Enable Ethernet PAUSE transmit and receive

1

1

0

0

Disable Ethernet PAUSE transmit and receive

Disable Ethernet PAUSE transmit and receive

1

1

0

1

Enable Ethernet PAUSE receive and disable Ethernet PAUSE transmit

Enable Ethernet PAUSE transmit and disable Ethernet PAUSE receive

1

1

Don’t care

Don’t care

Enable Ethernet PAUSE transmit and receive

Enable Ethernet PAUSE transmit and receive

Note:

For your convenience, Table 3 replicates Table 28B-3 of Section 2 of the IEEE 802.X specification.

PFC

PFC is a lossless transport and congestion relief feature that works by providing granular link-level flow control for each IEEE 802.1p code point (priority) on a full-duplex Ethernet link. When the receive buffer on a switch interface fills to a threshold, the switch transmits a pause frame to the sender (the connected peer) to temporarily stop the sender from transmitting more frames. The buffer threshold must be low enough so that the sender has time to stop transmitting frames and the receiver can accept the frames already on the wire before the buffer overflows. The switch automatically sets queue buffer thresholds to prevent frame loss.

When congestion forces one priority on a link to pause, all of the other priorities on the link continue to send frames. Only frames of the paused priority are not transmitted. When the receive buffer empties below another threshold, the switch sends a message that starts the flow again.

You configure PFC using a congestion notification profile (CNP). A CNP has two parts:

  • Input—Specify the code point (or code points) on which to enable PFC, and optionally specify the maximum receive unit (MRU) and the cable length between the interface and the connected peer interface.

  • Output—Specify the output queue or output queues that respond to pause messages from the connected peer.

You apply a PFC configuration by configuring a CNP on one or more interfaces. Each interface that uses a particular CNP is enabled to pause traffic identified by the priorities (code points) specified in that CNP. You can configure one CNP on an interface, and you can configure different CNPs on different interfaces. When you configure a CNP on an interface, ingress traffic that is mapped to a priority that the CNP enables for PFC is paused whenever the queue buffer fills to the pause threshold. (The pause threshold is not user-configurable.)

Configure PFC for a priority end to end along the entire data path to create a lossless lane of traffic on the network. You can selectively pause the traffic in any queue without pausing the traffic for other queues on the same link. You can create lossless lanes for traffic such as FCoE, LAN backup, or management, while using standard frame-drop congestion management for IP traffic on the same link.

Potential consequences of flow control are:

  • Ingress port congestion (configuring too many lossless flows can cause ingress port congestion)

  • A paused priority that causes upstream devices to pause the same priority, thus spreading congestion back through the network

By definition, PFC supports symmetric pause only (as opposed to Ethernet PAUSE, which supports symmetric and asymmetric pause). With symmetric pause, a device can:

  • Transmit pause frames to pause incoming traffic. (You configure this using the input stanza of a congestion notification profile.)

  • Receive pause frames and stop sending traffic to a device whose buffer is too full to accept more frames. (You configure this using the output stanza of a congestion notification profile.)

Receiving a PFC frame from a connected peer pauses traffic on egress queues based on the IEEE 802.1p priorities that the PFC pause frame identifies. The priorities are 0 through 7. By default, the priorities map to queue numbers 0 through 7, respectively, and to specific forwarding classes, as shown in Table 4:

Table 4: Default PFC Priority to Queue and Forwarding Class Mapping

IEEE 802.1p Priority (Code Point)

Queue

Forwarding Class

0 (000)

0

best-effort

1 (001)

1

best-effort

2 (010)

2

best-effort

3 (011)

3

fcoe

4 (100)

4

no-loss

5 (101)

5

best-effort

6 (110)

6

network-control

7 (111)

7

network-control

For example, a received PFC pause frame that pauses priority 3 pauses output queue 3. If you do not want to use the default configuration, you can configure customized mapping of priorities to queues and forwarding classes.

Note:

By convention, deployments with converged server access typically use IEEE 802.1p priority 3 for FCoE traffic. The default configuration sets the fcoe forwarding class as a lossless forwarding class that is mapped to queue 3. The default classifier maps incoming priority 3 traffic to the fcoe forwarding class. However, you must apply PFC to the entire FCoE data path to configure the end-to-end lossless behavior that FCoE traffic requires.

If your network uses priority 3 for FCoE traffic, we recommend that you use the default configuration. If your network uses a priority other than 3 for FCoE traffic, you can configure lossless FCoE transport on any IEEE 80.21p priority as described in Understanding CoS IEEE 802.1p Priorities for Lossless Traffic Flows and Understanding CoS IEEE 802.1p Priority Remapping on an FCoE-FC Gateway.

To enable PFC on a priority:

  1. Specify the IEEE 802.1p code point to pause in the input stanza of a CNP.

  2. If you are not using the default lossless forwarding classes, specify the IEEE 802.1p code point to pause and the corresponding output queue in the output stanza of the CNP.

  3. Apply the CNP to the ingress interfaces on which you want to pause the traffic.

  4. If you are not using the default lossless forwarding classes, apply the CNP to the ingress interfaces on which you want to pause the traffic.

CAUTION:

Any change to the PFC configuration on a port temporarily blocks the entire port (not just the priorities affected by the PFC change) so that the port can implement the change, then unblocks the port. Blocking the port stops ingress and egress traffic, and causes packet loss on all queues on the port until the port is unblocked.

A change to the PFC configuration means any change to a CNP, including changing the input portion of the CNP (enabling or disabling PFC on a priority, or changing the MRU or cable-length values) or changing the output portion of the CNP that enables or disables output flow control on a queue. A PFC configuration change only affects ports that use the changed CNP.

The following actions change the PFC configuration:

  • Deleting or disabling a PFC configuration (input or output) in a CNP that is in use on one or more interfaces. For example:

    1. An existing CNP with an input stanza that enables PFC on priorities 3, 5, and 6 is configured on interfaces xe-0/0/20 and xe-0/0/21.

    2. We disable the PFC configuration for priority 6 in the input CNP, and then commit the configuration.

    3. The PFC configuration change causes all traffic on interfaces xe-0/0/20 and xe-0/0/21 to stop until the PFC change has been implemented. When the PFC change has been implemented, traffic resumes.

  • Configuring a CNP on an interface. (This changes the PFC state by enabling PFC on one or more priorities.)

  • Deleting a CNP from an interface. (This changes the PFC state by disabling PFC on one or more priorities.)

When you associate the CNP with an interface, the interface uses PFC to send pause requests when the output queue buffer for the lossless traffic fills to the pause threshold.

On switches that use different classifiers for unicast and multidestination traffic, you can map a unicast queue (queue 0 through 7) and a multidestination queue (queue 8, 9, 10, or 11) to the same IEEE 802.1p code point (priority) so that both unicast and multicast traffic use that priority. However, do not map multidestination traffic to lossless output queues. Starting with Junos OS Release 12.3, you can map one priority to multiple output queues.

Note:

You can attach a maximum of one CNP to an interface, but you can create an unlimited number of CNPs that explicitly configure only the input stanza and use the default output stanza.

The output stanza of the CNP maps to a profile that interfaces use to respond to pause messages received from the connected peer. On standalone switches, you can create two CNPs with an explicitly configured output stanza.

Lossless Transport Support Summary

The switch supports up to six lossless forwarding classes. For lossless transport, you must enable PFC on the IEEE 802.1p priorities (code points) mapped to lossless forwarding classes.

CAUTION:

Any change to the PFC configuration on a port temporarily blocks the entire port (not just the priorities affected by the PFC change) so that the port can implement the change, then unblocks the port. Blocking the port stops ingress and egress traffic, and causes packet loss on all queues on the port until the port is unblocked.

The following limitation applies to support lossless transport on QFabric systems only:

  • The internal fiber cable length from the QFabric system Node device to the QFabric system Interconnect device cannot exceed 150 meters.

The default CoS configuration provides two lossless forwarding classes, fcoe and no-loss. If you explicitly configure lossless forwarding classes, you must include the no-loss packet drop attribute to enable lossless behavior, or the traffic is not lossless. For both default and explicit lossless forwarding class configuration, you must configure CNP input stanzas to enable PFC on the priority of the lossless traffic and apply the CNPs to ingress interfaces.

Note:

The information in this note applies only to systems that do not run the ELS CLI.

Junos OS Release 12.2 introduced changes to the way the switch handles lossless forwarding classes (including the default fcoe and no-loss forwarding classes).

In Junos OS Release 12.1, either explicitly configuring the fcoe and no-loss forwarding classes or using the default configuration for these forwarding classes resulted in the same lossless behavior for traffic mapped to those forwarding classes.

However, in Junos OS Release 12.2, if you explicitly configure the fcoe or the no-loss forwarding class, that forwarding class is no longer treated as a lossless forwarding class. Traffic mapped to these forwarding classes is treated as lossy (best-effort) traffic. This is true even if the explicit configuration is exactly the same as the default configuration.

If your CoS configuration from Junos OS Release 12.1 or earlier includes the explicit configuration of the fcoe or the no-loss forwarding class, then when you upgrade to Junos OS Release 12.2, those forwarding classes are not lossless. To preserve the lossless treatment of these forwarding classes, delete the the explicit fcoe and no-loss forwarding class configuration before you upgrade to Junos OS Release 12.2.

See Overview of CoS Changes Introduced in Junos OS Release 12.2 for detailed information about this change and how to delete an existing lossless configuration.

In Junos OS Release 12.3, the default behavior of the fcoe and no-loss forwarding classes is the same as in Junos OS Release 12.2. However, in Junos OS Release 12.3, you can configure up to six lossless forwarding classes. All explicitly configured lossless forwarding classes must include the new no-loss packet drop attribute or the forwarding class is lossy.

Understanding CoS IEEE 802.1p Priorities for Lossless Traffic Flows provides detailed information about the explicit configuration of lossless priorities and about the default configuration of lossless priorities, including the input and output stanzas of the CNP.

Note:

PFC and Ethernet PAUSE are used only on Ethernet interfaces. Fabric (fte) ports on QFabric systems (Node device fabric ports and Interconnect device fabric ports) use link-layer flow control (LLFC) to ensure the appropriate treatment of lossless traffic.

Change History Table

Feature support is determined by the platform and release you are using. Use Feature Explorer to determine if a feature is supported on your platform.

Release
Description
21.2R1EVO
PTX10008 routers support DCBX and PFC.
12.3
Starting with Junos OS Release 12.3, you can map one priority to multiple output queues.