Virtual Routing And Forwarding (Vrf) - Dell Force10 C150 Configuration Manual

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Virtual Routing and Forwarding (VRF)

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Virtual Routing and Forwarding (VRF) (VRF) is supported only on platform:
VRF allows a physical router to partition itself into multiple Virtual Routers (VRs). The control and data
plane are isolated in each VR so that traffic does NOT flow across VRs.Virtual Routing and Forwarding
(VRF) allows multiple instances of a routing table to co-exist within the same router at the same time.
VRF improves functionality by allowing network paths to be segmented without using multiple devices.
Using VRF also increases network security and can eliminate the need for encryption and authentication
due to traffic segmentation. Internet service providers (ISPs) often take advantage of VRF to create
separate virtual private networks (VPNs) for customers; VRF is also referred to as VPN routing and
forwarding.
VRF is implemented in a network device by having a distinct Forwarding Information Base (FIB) per VRF
instance. A network device has the ability to configure different virtual routers, so that each has its own
FIB that is not accessible to any other virtual router instance on the same device.
VRF acts like a logical router; while a physical router may include many routing tables, a VRF instance
uses only a single routing table. VRF uses a forwarding table that designates the next hop for each data
packet, a list of devices that may be called upon to forward the packet, and a set of rules and routing
protocols that govern how the packet is forwarded. These VRF forwarding tables prevent traffic from
being forwarded outside a specific VRF path and also keep out traffic that should remain outside the VRF
path.
VRF uses interfaces to distinguish routes for different VRF instances. Interfaces in a VRF can be either
physical (Ethernet port or port channel) or logical (VLANs). Starting in release 8.4.1.0, you can configure
identical or overlapping IP subnets on different interfaces if each interface belongs to a different VRF
instance.
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