User-defined VRF Support over MCT

Virtual routing and forwarding (VRF) allows multiple instances of a routing table to coexist within a router. A router can have multiple VRF instances configured. The routing table, Forwarding Information Base (FIB), and so on are maintained separately for each VRF instance. A service provider can cater to multiple clients by keeping the routing information separate for each client, and different clients can use similar or overlapping IP addresses without the fear of information being sent to devices other than their own. For more information on VRF and related configurations, refer to the RUCKUS FastIron Layer 3 Routing Configuration Guide.

Similar to the individual functionality of VRF, VRF over MCT allows the peer cluster devices to maintain separate routing and forwarding tables for each VRF instance, thus allowing overlapping of IP addresses, route isolation, and so on. In releases prior to FastIron 08.0.70, VEs spanning the MCT member VLAN ports supported only the default VRF. The MCT enhancement in FastIron 08.0.70 allows the MCT member ports to be added under user-defined VRF instances.

VRF over MCT facilitates the support of Layer 3 routing protocol instances running under user VRF instances to be enabled on the MCT member ports. Thus, the supported routing protocols can maintain adjacency over each user VRF instance between the peer cluster devices, and clients and uplink devices. VRF over MCT also allows the MCT cluster peer IP address to be configured as the next hop or neighbor in different IGP protocols and helps to advertise or propagate the cluster (session VE) IP addresses.