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Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →Tungsten Fabric 5.1, announced by The Linux Foundation on June 12, 2019, added container service chaining for workloads with multiple network interfaces, expanded routing and BGPaaS options, and data-plane optimizations. The announcement’s headline mentions security, but the release announcement and notes do not identify a specific new security control. Its compatibility list and quality claims are historical release-time statements, not current support or security guidance.
What changed in Tungsten Fabric 5.1?
The release combined networking capabilities for container and hybrid-cloud deployments with control-plane availability options and performance-oriented changes to vRouter. The main additions were:
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- Service chaining extended to container workloads that use multiple network interfaces.
- Extended communities for more flexible routing policy, plus selective BGPaaS peering with control nodes.
- Fat flows, Cuckoo hashing in vRouter flow-table lookups, and DPDK batch processing.
- Support described in the release notes for Mesosphere DC/OS and Apache Mesos networking, as well as a procedure for adding a compute node to an existing containerized OpenStack cluster.
The feature descriptions and compatibility statements below refer to the 2019 release. They should not be read as a present-day support matrix.
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Container service chaining
The announcement says 5.1 extended service chaining to cloud-native and container workloads by supporting containers with multiple network interfaces. This makes service chaining available for those workloads when their design uses multiple interfaces; it does not mean every container deployment needs more than one.
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Selective BGPaaS peering and control-node zones
Selective peering lets BGPaaS connect with chosen control nodes, a design intended to integrate BGP-speaking virtual network functions (VNFs) while supporting high availability. The release notes describe configuring control-node zones, including primary and secondary zones that can each contain one or more control nodes. The notes establish the configuration option, not a guarantee of a particular automatic failover behavior.
Extended communities
Support for extended communities in the control plane was presented as a way to make routing policies more flexible and better fit existing network designs. The release announcement does not specify policy syntax or promise compatibility with every network configuration.
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Which performance changes did 5.1 include?
The Linux Foundation announcement describes three mechanisms and their intended effects. It does not publish throughput, latency, scale, or comparative benchmark results, so the benefits should be understood as qualitative release claims rather than measured gains.
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| Mechanism | What it does | Stated purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Fat flows | Aggregate flows in high-flow situations, such as subscriber internet access. | Reduce flow-setup latency. |
| Cuckoo hashing | Used for vRouter flow-table lookups. | Address lookup bottlenecks under heavy load. |
| DPDK batch processing | Processes data-plane work in batches. | Increase performance and support throughput demands. |
These descriptions explain the intended mechanisms, not how much faster a particular deployment became. The announcement provides no benchmark figures or test conditions from which to estimate a gain.
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- REGIONAL COMPATIBILITY: Made for use in U.S. & CA only
What deployment platforms did the 2019 announcement list?
In its June 12, 2019 announcement, The Linux Foundation listed the following platform versions and environments. This is a snapshot of what the announcement said at that time; it does not establish current compatibility or maintenance status.
| Platform or environment | Statement in the June 2019 announcement |
|---|---|
| Kubernetes | Version 1.12 listed. |
| OpenShift | Version 3.11 listed. |
| OpenStack | Ocata and newer listed. |
| VMware vCenter | Version 6.7 listed. |
| AWS and Azure | Support listed without a specific service version in the announcement. |
| Google Cloud Platform (GCP) | Support described as in progress at that time. |
Mesos and OpenStack details in the release notes
The 5.1 release notes describe support for Mesosphere DC/OS and overlay and non-overlay network virtualization in an Apache Mesos environment. They also describe adding a compute node to an existing containerized OpenStack cluster by configuring instances.yaml. These are release-note capabilities, not evidence that the same integration steps or platform versions remain supported today.
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Did Tungsten Fabric 5.1 add a security feature?
The release announcement headline includes “Security,” but the reviewed announcement and 5.1 release notes do not detail a specific new security feature or control. The article therefore does not establish that 5.1 introduced a particular security capability.
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How to assess whether the 5.1 capabilities fit a use case
Because the announcement does not provide a current support or security picture, deployment decisions require more than matching a feature name. For a historical assessment of 5.1, check:
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- Whether the required orchestrator and cloud appear in the dated 2019 platform list, and whether the exact platform version matters.
- Whether the container workload needs service chaining and is designed to use multiple network interfaces.
- Whether selective BGPaaS peering and primary/secondary control-node zones fit the intended availability design.
- Whether the workload has flow-volume or lookup concerns that relate to the announced fat-flow and vRouter changes; the announcement supplies no performance figures for sizing.
- Whether a maintained release and its current security posture can be confirmed separately. The 2019 release material does not answer that question.
Sources
- The Linux Foundation, “Introducing Tungsten Fabric 5.1: Security, Feature, and Performance Enhancements for Network Operators & Developers,” June 12, 2019.
- Tungsten Fabric Documentation, “Tungsten Fabric Release 5.1 Release Notes”.
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