Contract preferred group guidelines and limitations

Updated: April 15, 2026

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Contract preferred groups have L3Out prefix and GOLF compatibility restrictions that can affect traffic forwarding.

A contract preferred group allows included endpoint groups (EPGs) in a VRF to communicate without explicit contracts.

Configuration guidelines and limitations

Observe the following guidelines and limitations when you configure contract preferred groups:

If an L3Out EPG belongs to a contract preferred group and an external source uses the default route 0.0.0.0/0, the border leaf switches might drop unicast traffic that enters the fabric. This behavior is expected.
An external EPG (l3extInstP) that contains the 0.0.0.0/0 prefix cannot be included in a contract preferred group. To match all IPv4 traffic, configure the 0.0.0.0/1 and 128.0.0.0/1 prefixes instead.
Contract preferred group EPGs are not supported with GOLF. Use explicit contracts to control communication between an application EPG and an L3Out EPG for GOLF.

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