Virtual Routing and Forwarding (VRF)

Virtual Routing and Forwarding, or VRF, is a network technology that creates logically separated routing environments on a shared physical network device. Each VRF maintains its own routing table and can therefore process traffic independently of other VRF instances. This also enables identical or overlapping IP address ranges to be used simultaneously when assigned to separate VRFs. VRF is commonly used to separate customer, departmental, management or tenant networks. The technology is widely deployed in enterprise networks, data centres and service provider infrastructures. In MPLS-based Layer 3 VPNs, VRFs provide an important mechanism for separating customer-specific routing information. If traffic needs to pass between different VRFs, specific configuration for Inter-VRF Routing is required.