Unlike the traditional Cisco switching world, where there existed only 3 VLAN types (standard, extended, private), Cisco ACI is definitely supposed to have several of them, to ensure that multitudes of Network Professionals get their brains wired! Luckily, I came across the following ones which seem to make sense about their respective roles to have the traffic forwarding in place: VLAN ID ( VlanID ) - Platform independent VLAN that is locally significant to each switch. This VLAN is automatically bound to the port-group VLAN existing on the DVS. It is derived from the VLAN pool that is configured in the Fabric Access Policies. Hardware VLAN ID ( HW_VlanId ) - In order to switch traffic locally, most leaf switches comprise of Broadcom ASIC. This VLAN type is utilized by the Broadcom ASIC chip. Connect to Broadcom ASIC on the leaf : vsh_lc To generate the list of endpoints connected : show system internal eltmc info vlan brief The various VLAN types are: BD_CTRL_VLAN - Infrastructure