Vrf Cisco IOS

VRF means Virtual Routing and Forwarding or VPN Routing and Forwarding.

A VRF is a Routing instance on a physical Router or Layer 3 switch. A Routing instance keeps its own Routing Table and owns its own interfaces. There can be several VRF's on a Router.

A simple VRF Example

ip vrf INTERNET
 description Routing instance INTERNET
 rd 65200:1
!
interface Vlan101
 description SF Forbindelse til Internet
 ip vrf forwarding INTERNET
 ip address 222.2.2.66 255.255.255.252
!
interface Vlan111
 description SF DMZ zone
 ip vrf forwarding INTERNET
 ip address 204.0.0.33 255.255.255.240
!
ip route vrf INTERNET 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 222.2.2.65
ip route vrf INTERNET 172.21.0.0 255.255.0.0 204.0.0.34
ip route vrf INTERNET 172.22.0.0 255.255.0.0 204.0.0.34
ip route vrf INTERNET 192.168.100.0 255.255.255.0 204.0.0.34

Some Useful commands

R1#ping vrf INTERNET 8.8.8.8
R1#show ip route vrf INTERNET
R1#telnet 204.2.1.2 /vrf INTERNET
R1#traceroute vrf INTERNET 192.168.7.8
R1#show ip arp vrf INTERNET

VRF Lite

VRF configuration isn't at all dependent on MPLS (the two components just work well together). In Cisco terminology, deployment of VRFs without MPLS is known as VRF lite.