The following are the various functions of VEM:

• Advanced networking and security
• Switching between directly attached VMs
• Uplink to the rest of the network

Unlike conventional Nexus switches, each line card has its own media access control (MAC) table that goes through the same process as conventional switches:

• Ingress: Traffic that comes inbound towards the interfaces of the N1KV switch
• L2 lookup: A process that handles the packets after the parser engine has parsed the initial packet delivery
• Egress: Traffic goes out of the interfaces of the N1KV switch