Configuring Multi-VRF CE Information About Multi-VRF CE, on page 1 How to Configure Multi-VRF CE, on page 4 Monitoring Multi-VRF CE, on page 20 Configuration Example: Multi-VRF CE, on page 20 Feature History for Multi-VRF CE, on page 24 Information About Multi-VRF CE Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) provide a secure way for customers to share bandwidth over an ISP backbone network. A VPN is a collection of sites sharing a common routing table. A customer site is connected to the service-provider network by one or more interfaces, and the service provider associates each interface with a VPN routing table, called a VPN routing/forwarding (VRF) table.
The switch supports multiple VPN routing/forwarding (multi-VRF) instances in customer edge (CE) devices (multi-VRF CE) when the it is running the Network Advantage license. Multi-VRF CE allows a service provider to support two or more VPNs with overlapping IP addresses. The switch does not use Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) to support VPNs. Note Understanding Multi-VRF CE Multi-VRF CE is a feature that allows a service provider to support two or more VPNs, where IP addresses can be overlapped among the VPNs. Multi-VRF CE uses input interfaces to distinguish routes for different VPNs and forms virtual packet-forwarding tables by associating one or more Layer 3 interfaces with each VRF.
Interfaces in a VRF can be either physical, such as Ethernet ports, or logical, such as VLAN SVIs, but an interface cannot belong to more than one VRF at any time. Multi-VRF CE interfaces must be Layer 3 interfaces. Note Multi-VRF CE includes these devices: Configuring Multi-VRF CE 1