--- title: What Happened to FabricPath and Its Friends? «... description: A retrospective on Layer-2 fabric technologies — FabricPath, TRILL, SPB, Juniper QFabric, and Virtual Chassis — examining what happened to each and why they... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/what-happened-to-fabricpath-and-its-friends-ipspace-net-blog-yupqcrajq twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: What Happened to FabricPath and Its Friends? « ipSpace.net blog | daily.dev og:description: A retrospective on Layer-2 fabric technologies — FabricPath, TRILL, SPB, Juniper QFabric, and Virtual Chassis — examining what happened to each and why they... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/what-happened-to-fabricpath-and-its-friends-ipspace-net-blog-yupqcrajq og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/YUpQcrajq.png og:image:alt: What Happened to FabricPath and Its Friends? « ipSpace.net blog og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # What Happened to FabricPath and Its Friends? « ipSpace.net blog **[ipSpace.net Blog](https://daily.dev/sources/ipspace)** · 4 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A retrospective on Layer-2 fabric technologies — FabricPath, TRILL, SPB, Juniper QFabric, and Virtual Chassis — examining what happened to each and why they failed. TRILL died before reaching mainstream adoption, QFabric collapsed under the weight of its centralized control plane, FabricPath was effectively killed when Nexus 9000 launched without it in 2013, and Brocade's VCS Fabric was abandoned in 2016 when the industry converged on EVPN/VXLAN. SPB survives in niche form under Extreme Networks (FabricConnect) and Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, and is still considered viable for campus networks with budget-friendly switches. The verdict: these technologies are barely alive, worth understanding historically, but not worth pursuing for greenfield deployments. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### Is Cisco FabricPath still worth deploying in a new data center network? FabricPath is not worth deploying in a greenfield data center. The writing was on the wall when Nexus 9000 switches launched without FabricPath support in 2013. Most existing deployments have since migrated to VXLAN/EVPN, and the industry broadly converged on EVPN/VXLAN by 2016 when Brocade dropped VCS Fabric as the last major holdout. _Engineers planning new data center fabrics track VXLAN/EVPN adoption and migration patterns on daily.dev._ ### Is SPB (Shortest Path Bridging) still used anywhere in production networks? SPB survives in niche production deployments. Extreme Networks sells it as FabricConnect (inherited from Avaya/Nortel) and Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise supports it in the OmniSwitch series. It remains a viable option for campus networks where budget-friendly SPBM switches are available and VXLAN/EVPN hasn't yet reached affordable access-layer hardware. Full interoperability between vendor implementations is not guaranteed. _Network engineers evaluating campus fabric options find vendor-specific SPB vs EVPN trade-offs covered on daily.dev._ ### Why did Juniper QFabric fail? QFabric failed because scaling a centralized control and management plane to 128 switches proved too difficult. Even with a solid architecture and Juniper's expertise, the approach couldn't hold up at scale. By 2019, Juniper's own migration documentation acknowledged that many QFabric hardware devices had reached end-of-life status, and customers were directed to migrate to EVPN/VXLAN. _Teams still running legacy Juniper fabrics and planning migrations follow the latest EVPN transition coverage on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Step-by-step fabric deployment with Cisco Nexus Hyperfabric](https://daily.dev/posts/step-by-step-fabric-deployment-with-cisco-nexus-hyperfabric-r4hzbrojn) · Cisco · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Modernizing Campus Networks with Fabric Architecture](https://daily.dev/posts/modernizing-campus-networks-with-fabric-architecture-sspttrusx) · Cisco · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [vPC and ESI-based multi-homing: The dynamic duo powering scalable, resilient data centers](https://daily.dev/posts/vpc-and-esi-based-multi-homing-the-dynamic-duo-powering-scalable-resilient-data-centers-wczyimyyo) · Cisco · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Cisco Nexus One Fabric: Unify Data Center Operations with Open VXLAN/EVPN Standards](https://daily.dev/posts/cisco-nexus-one-fabric-unify-data-center-operations-with-open-vxlan-evpn-standards-m6xkp6n7d) · Cisco · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Extending Infrastructure Fabric: The Journey to Cloud-Native Isovalent Networking](https://daily.dev/posts/extending-infrastructure-fabric-the-journey-to-cloud-native-isovalent-networking-dwiqat8eb) · Cisco · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/what-happened-to-fabricpath-and-its-friends-ipspace-net-blog-yupqcrajq) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"What Happened to FabricPath and Its Friends? « ipSpace.net blog","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/what-happened-to-fabricpath-and-its-friends-ipspace-net-blog-yupqcrajq","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/what-happened-to-fabricpath-and-its-friends-ipspace-net-blog-yupqcrajq"},"datePublished":"2026-08-11T08:53:35.409Z","dateModified":"2026-08-11T09:13:17.114Z","description":"A retrospective on Layer-2 fabric technologies — FabricPath, TRILL, SPB, Juniper QFabric, and Virtual Chassis — examining what happened to each and why they...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--58gMhC4P--/f_auto/v1722860399/public/Placeholder%2012","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--58gMhC4P--/f_auto/v1722860399/public/Placeholder%2012","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"ipSpace.net Blog","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"ipSpace.net Blog","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--xS7E82MT--/f_auto,q_auto/v1786438303/logos/ipspace?_a=BAMAMicg0","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/ipspace"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/what-happened-to-fabricpath-and-its-friends-ipspace-net-blog-yupqcrajq","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"","timeRequired":"PT4M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"ipSpace.net Blog","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/ipspace"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"What Happened to FabricPath and Its Friends? « ipSpace.net blog"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/what-happened-to-fabricpath-and-its-friends-ipspace-net-blog-yupqcrajq#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"Is Cisco FabricPath still worth deploying in a new data center network?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"FabricPath is not worth deploying in a greenfield data center. 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