Reference Guide

Virtual Routing and Forwarding (VRF)

Virtual Routing and Forwarding (VRF) is supported only on platform S6000

VRF Overview

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 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). You can configure identical or overlapping IP

subnets on different interfaces if each interface belongs to a different VRF instance.

Virtual Routing and Forwarding (VRF)

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