Network & Infrastructure / EVPN, VXLAN & Data Center Fabrics
EVPN ARP suppression with stale IP-to-MAC bindings
A moved workload remains unreachable even though its new MAC location is known. A stale advertised IP binding can make local ARP suppression answer with outdated information.
Environment and inputs: BGP EVPN overlays on a routed underlay; supported route types and multihoming behavior depend on the network OS. Diagnostic/design example; not tested on production equipment.
Collect the evidence
Compare local neighbor entries, EVPN MAC/IP routes, mobility sequence and the host's actual addresses. Capture which device answered ARP and whether that answer came from suppression or the real endpoint.
Explain the result
ARP suppression replaces some flooding with control-plane knowledge. It works only when the advertised IP-to-MAC ownership is accurate and mobility updates reach the relevant VTEPs.
Plan the fix
Repair stale ownership at its origin and review supported binding aging and mobility handling. Do not disable suppression fabric-wide before distinguishing stale control-plane state from duplicate host addressing.
Check the result and rollback
Validate fresh resolution from multiple leaves and confirm no duplicate owner reappears. Restore previous suppression settings if the change increases flooding without correcting the underlying ownership problem.