Terms and Definitions

The following table lists terms and definitions used in this VRF configuration discussion.

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VRF Configuration Terms and Definitions

Term Definition
BGP L3 VPN address family An IPv4 or IPv6 address family used to activate BGP neighbors for this L3 VPN.
Customer Equipment (CE) router A router on the edge of the customer private network, running an IGP such as OSPF that is directly connected to the public network PE on which L3 VPN is configured.
L3 Tunnel A Layer 3 tunnel through which L3 VPN packets pass transparently through the public core routers between the PE end-point routers.
Provider (P) core router A router in the core of the public network running an IGP such as OSPF through which the L3 tunnel connecting PE routers passes.
Provider Edge (PE) router A router on the edge of the public network connected to the private network customer equipment on which the L3 VPN configuration takes place
Route Distinguisher (RD) A 64 bit identifier attribute that gets prepended to the user IPv4 or IPv6 address and makes the IP address globally unique across the VPN network and within the BGP routing table.
Route Target Determines which L3 VPN routes are inserted into the VRF.
VPN ID A virtual private network identifier used by non-VPN network resources to identify the VPN to which a client packet flow belongs.
VRF instance A segregated routing domain for the routed forwarding of packets managed by the global router.
Native MPLS An encapsulation method that provides the egress router path using an MPLS label.
MPLS LDP A label distribution protocol capable of determining the egress router path assigned to the MPLS label.
LDP LSR ID The label distribution protocol Label Switch Router Identifier.