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    Cisco Virtual Routing and Forwarding (VRF)

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    Marco Canales NAveda
    Cisco Virtual Routing and Forwarding (VRF)

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    Cisco Virtual Routing and Forwarding (VRF)

    Uploaded by

    Marco Canales NAveda
    33 views10 pages
    Cisco Virtual Routing and Forwarding (VRF)

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    Cisco Virtual Routing and Forwarding (VRF)

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    Download as pdf or txt
    33 views10 pages

    Cisco Virtual Routing and Forwarding (VRF)

    Uploaded by

    Marco Canales NAveda
    Cisco Virtual Routing and Forwarding (VRF)

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 10

    Cisco Virtual Routing and Forwarding (VRF)

    What is VRF?
    VRF is the abbreviation of Virtual Routing and Forwarding. Basically, VRF is a technology
    with which we can create separate virtual routers on a physical router. With these separate virtual
    routers, we can use router interfaces, routing and forwarding tables isolated with VRFs. The
    network traffic in a VRF is not forwarded to another VRF. In other words, forwarding process is
    done only between the interfaces on the same VRF. In this lesson, we will focus on Cisco Virtual
    Routing and Forwarding.

    As you know, service providers give services to different networks. And these different networks
    use overlapping IP addressing inside their network. So, how a service provider manage this without
    a conflict? Service providers uses VRF for multiple routing instances. By doing this, they connect
    customer locations without any conflict. From the point of customer view, their locations are
    connected to the ports of a router.

    VRFs are similar to VLANs used in switches at layer 2 of the OSI Reference Model. But VRF
    technology works at Layer 3. As you know, with VLANs, we can create multiple virtual switches
    in a physical switch. With VRFs, we can create multiple routers in a physical router.

    By default, a physical router has one global routing table and works as one router. This means that
    all the router interfaces and routing, forwarding tables are belong to Global VRF. But, with
    multiple VRFs, we can separate a router into multiple routers. Ans this is the answer of what is
    VRF question.

    As you can see above, there is one physical router in the above Service Provider topology. But
    when we use VRF, we create two virtual routers with two VRFs. Each of these VRF Routing tables
    are separate from the other.

    Benefits of VRFs
    There are various benefits of VRFs (Virtual Routing and Forwarding). Below, you can find these
    VRF benefits.

    With VRFs, we can create multiple virtual routers in a single physical router with
    isolated routing and forwarding.
    With VRFs, we can use overlapping IP addresses on created separate virtual routers.
    With separate and small routing tables, VRFs provide easy troubleshooting.
    Useful for MP-BGP and MPLS deployments.
    You can also check Cisco Packet Tracer Labs Course!

    How to Configure VRF Lite?


    We have talked about what is VRF and Cisco Virtual Routing and Forwarding benefits. Now,
    let’s learn how to configure VRF Lite on Cisco routers. Here, we will use the below VRF topology
    for our VRF example.

    As you can see on the topology, there is one ISP router and there are three customers. Each
    customer has two branches and they are using the same IP address range for their interfaces.
    Normally, it is not possible to use same IP address on the interfaces of a router. But with VRF, this
    will be possible. Let’s see how it is possible.

    For our Cisco VRF Lite Configuration example, we will follow the below steps:

    Creating VRFs
    Setting IPv4 & IPv6 Address Families
    Assigning interfaces to VRFs
    Enabling Routing For VRFs
    VRF Verification

    Here, we will do Cisco Virtual Routing and Forwarding configuration on ISP router. So,
    customer routers will not know what is going on. They will think that, they are connected to a
    specific router which connects them to the other branch.

    Now, let’s configure the routers on the topology for our Cisco Virtual Routing and Forwarding,
    VRF Lite Example.

    You can also download Cisco Router and Switch Configuration Labs!

    Creating VRFs
    Our first step on this example is creating VRFs. We can create VRFs with two different commands.
    One of them is old “ip vrf vrf-name” command and the other is new “vrf definition vrf-name”
    command. Below, we will show both of them.

    Here, we will create three VRFs:

    CustomerX
    CustomerY
    CustomerZ

    Firstly, we will use use the new version of VRF create command like below:

    ISP# configure terminal

    ISP(config)# vrf definition CustomerX

    ISP(config-vrf)# vrf definition CustomerY

    ISP(config-vrf)# vrf definition CustomerZ

    ISP(config-vrf)# end

    Secondly, let’s use the old one that we can still use.
    ISP# configure terminal

    ISP(config)# ip vrf CustomerX

    ISP(config-vrf)# ip vrf CustomerY

    ISP(config-vrf)# ip vrf CustomerZ

    ISP(config-vrf)# end

    After creating VRFs on Service Provider router, let’s verify them with “show ip vrf” command.

    Router# show ip vrf

    Setting IPv4 & IPv6 Address Families


    To enable different address families like IPv4 and IPv6 we will use “address-family ipv4” and
    “address-family ipv6” commands.

    ISP(config-vrf)# address-family ipv4

    ISP(config-vrf-af)# exit

    ISP(config-vrf)# address-family ipv6

    ISP(config-vrf-af)# exit

    Assigning Interfaces to VRFs


    After creating VRFs, now it is time to assign interfaces to these VRFs. This step will define the
    members of the VRFs. In other words, we will define which interface is belong to which VRF. To
    do this, we will use “ip vrf forwarding vrf-name” command, under the interfaces of this VRF.

    ISP(config)# interface gi0/1

    ISP(config-if)# ip vrf forwarding CustomerX


    ISP(config-if)# do show run interface gi0/1

    As you can see above, VRF creation will remove the interface IP address. So, we should
    reconfigure the interface IP address.

    ISP(config-if)# ip address 10.10.10.2 255.255.255.0

    ISP(config-if)# no shutdown

    ISP(config-if)# exit

    ISP(config)# interface gi0/6

    ISP(config-if)# ip vrf forwarding CustomerX

    ISP(config-if)# ip address 20.20.20.2 255.255.255.0

    ISP(config-if)# no shutdown

    ISP(config-if)# end

    ISP# show ip vrf

    ISP(config)# interface gi0/2

    ISP(config-if)# ip vrf forwarding CustomerY

    ISP(config-if)# ip address 20.20.20.2 255.255.255.0

    ISP(config-if)# end

    ISP(config)# interface gi0/5

    ISP(config-if)# ip vrf forwarding CustomerY

    ISP(config-if)# ip address 20.20.20.2 255.255.255.0

    ISP(config-if)# end

    ISP(config)# interface gi0/3

    ISP(config-if)# ip vrf forwarding CustomerZ


    ISP(config-if)# ip address 20.20.20.2 255.255.255.0

    ISP(config-if)# end

    ISP(config)# interface gi0/4

    ISP(config-if)# ip vrf forwarding CustomerZ

    ISP(config-if)# ip address 20.20.20.2 255.255.255.0

    ISP(config-if)# end

    Enabling Routing For Interfaces


    Here, I will show you the configurations of the different routing alternatives.

    To configure default route for VRF CustomerX, we will use the below command:

    ISP(config)# ip route vrf CustomerX 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 172.16.16.2

    To enable OSPFv2 for VRF CustomerX, we will use the below vrf command:

    ISP(config)# router ospf 1 vrf CustomerX

    To assign CustomerX VRF to IPv4 unicast address family:

    ISP(config-router)# address-family ipv4 unicast vrf CustomerX

    To enable OSPFv3, we will use the below command:

    ISP(config)# router ospfv3 1


    To assign CustomerX VRF to IPv6 unicast address family:

    ISP(config-router)# address-family ipv6 unicast vrf CustomerX

    To enable EIGRP and to assign CustomerX VRF to IPv4 unicast address family for AS 100

    ISP(config)# router eigrp IPCisco

    ISP(config-router)# address-family ipv4 unicast vrf CustomerX autonomous-system 100

    To enable BGP for AS 100 and to assign CustomerX VRF to IPv4 unicast address family.

    ISP(config)# router bgp 100

    ISP(config-router)# address-family ipv4 vrf CustomerX

    VRF Verification
    Now, let’s use “show vrf” and “show vrf detail vrf-name” commands to see the interfaces under
    the related VRFs.

    ISP# show vrf

    ISP# show vrf detail vrf-name

    And, we can check the interface ip addresses with “show ip interface brief” command. As you can
    see, different interfaces can use same ip addresses with VRFs. Normally, this is not possible in a
    router.

    ISP# show ip int brief

    And can check routing table with “show ip route” command. This is global routing table, which
    can be called also as Global VRF. Global routing table is empty because we do not have any
    interfaces using this global routing table.

    ISP# show ip route

    We can check each VRF’s routing table with “show ip route vrf vrf-name” command.

    ISP# show ip route vrf CustomerX

    ISP# show ip route vrf CustomerY

    ISP# show ip route vrf CustomerZ

    To verify the connection between two branches of the customers, let’s use “ping vrf vrf-name
    interface-ip-address” command. Here, when we ping the same address with different vrf names,
    we will ping the related vrf interface.

    ISP# ping vrf CustomerX 10.10.10.1

    ISP# ping vrf CustomerX 20.20.20.1

    ISP# ping vrf CustomerY 10.10.10.1

    ISP# ping vrf CustomerY 20.20.20.1

    ISP# ping vrf CustomerZ 10.10.10.1

    ISP# ping vrf CustomerZ 20.20.20.1

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