Overview

VRF is a Virtual Routing and Forwarding framework built on top of Linux network namespaces.

Virtual Routing and Forwarding (VRF) is an IP technology that allows multiple instances of a routing table to work simultaneously within the same router. Thus, overlapping IP addresses do not conflict with each other.

Linux - Fast Path Synchronization - VRF is a compatibility layer between network namespaces and 6WIND VRF. Routing or management daemons use it to configure the kernel and the cache manager to replicate the kernel configuration into the fast path.

Features

• Overall initialization of VRF instances

• API allowing the management of VRF instances at user space level and kernel module level

Dependencies

Linux

• Linux - Fast Path Synchronization - VRF relies on your Linux distribution’s support of network namespaces. The CONFIG_NET_NS variable must be set to yes (y) in the kernel configuration.

• For Linux versions lower than 3.12, the following patches are required to allow cross-VRF through IP and IPv6 tunnels:

  http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=0bd8762

  http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=6c742e7

  http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=5e6700b

• Link-level VRF instances’ identifiers are passed to the user space via the IFLA_AF_SPEC attribute, which requires the following patch:

  http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=f8ff182c716c

• libnl3 >= 3.2.25