Virtual Routing and Forwarding overview

Virtual Routing and Forwarding (VRF) allows a physical router to be partitioned into multiple Virtual Router Forwarding instances (VRDs). The control and data plane are isolated in each VRF. This isolation keeps the traffic from crossing VRFs therefore multiple different routing tables can coexist within the same physical L3 switch/router.

Route leaking allows for routes to "leak" or be distributed, across multiple VRFs in a controlled manner. Two methods to leak routes from one VRF to another are:

  • Static Routes

  • MP-BGP (or Dynamic Route leaking using route-targets).