Virtual Routing and Forwarding (VRF) Lite by Arash Deljoo

The VRF full form in networking is Virtual Routing and Forwarding. This is an IP (Internet Protocol) technology that permits the co-existence of multiple instances of a routing table inside the same router simultaneously. The routing table is globally applicable and suitable for all incoming traffic.

VRF (Virtual Routing and Forwarding) works as a logical router, but there is only one routing table in a logical router, while VRF uses multiple routing tables. VRFs are implemented to use the router better and divide the network traffic efficiently.

• It operates on layer 3 of the OSI Model.

• It allows users to deploy overlapping or the same IP Address without conflict.

• VRFs are utilized for virtualization and isolation of networks.

• VPN tunnels for a single client or network are also created using VRF.

There are two types of VRFs:

• Complete VRF

• VRF Lite

VRF Full Form in Networking

The VRF full form in networking is Virtual Routing and Forwarding. This is an IP (Internet Protocol) technology that permits the co-existence of multiple instances of a routing table inside the same router simultaneously. The routing table is globally applicable and suitable for all incoming traffic.

What is VRF (Virtual Routing and Forwarding)?

VRF (Virtual Routing and Forwarding) works as a logical router, but there is only one routing table in a logical router, while VRF uses multiple routing tables. VRFs are implemented to use the router better and divide the network traffic efficiently.

• It operates on layer 3 of the OSI Model.

• It allows users to deploy overlapping or the same IP Address without conflict.

• VRFs are utilized for virtualization and isolation of networks.

• VPN tunnels for a single client or network are also created using VRF.

Complete VRF

VRF uses the labelling of traffic at layer 3 to segregate it (Just like VLANs at layer 2). The traffic is segregated from source to destination through MPLS Cloud, which uses MP-BGP.

VRF Lite

VRF Lite is a subset of VRF but without MPLS and MP-BGP. In Cisco’s terminology, the deployment of VRFs without MPLS is VRF Lite. It is mainly used for enterprises having networks with overlapping IP addresses. Each routed interface belongs to exactly one VRF, making VRF Lite very simple.

In light of the success of the VRF, the VRF Lite was accepted with open arms in Data centre and enterprise LAN environments.