2nd IEEE International Conference on Engineering and Technology (ICETECH), 17th & 18th March 2016, Coimbatore, TN,

India.

MPLS Multi-VRF Design and Implementation

using GNS simulator
Snehal Yadav and Amutha Jeyakumar
Department of Electrical Engineering
Veermata Jijabai Technological Institute, Mumbai 400039, India
snehaly1@gmail.com, amuthajaykumar@vjti.org.in
AbstractMPLS(Multi Protocol Label Switching) is an
emerging technology [1] which has started attracting all the
service provider networks with its exceptional and admirable
features. VPN(Virtual Private Network) is one of its most
popular feature which carries traffic securely and privately from
customers one end to another through the service providers
network. However, in this case the CE(Customer Edge) router is
not involved in providing private network through the customary
LAN. The Multi-VRF(Virtual Routing and Forwarding) CE
feature-also known as VRF-Liteis a feature whereby the VPN
functionality is extended to the CE router in an economical way.
A Multi-VRF router can run multiple instances of routing
protocols with a neighboring router with overlapping address
spaces configured on different VRF instances. Hence, only one
CE router is needed for multiple VPNs, thus simplifying
provisioning and network management rather than a multiple
CE router solution. This paper describes the designing of such a
Multi-VRF MPLS network on the service providers end which
can separate a customers large network into smaller sites and
keep them isolated in a cost-effective way. GNS(Graphical
Network Simulator) software stack with VMware virtualization
were chosen for this purpose, as these applications are well suited
for emulation of real network environment. The resultant
network obtained after this design is a real time solution to many
problems and demands in todays service providers network.
Index TermsMPLS, MPLS Virtual Private Network, Virtual
Routing and Forwarding, routing protocols, Customer Edge(CE)
router, Provider Edge(PE) router, route distinguisher, route
target.

I. INTRODUCTION
MPLS-VPNs [2] provide protection and isolation as traffic
travels through the provider network. The CE router has no
means to assure private networks across the conventional LAN
network. Usually to provide confidentiality, either a switch is
needed to be deployed and each client be located in a separate
VLAN or a separate CE router is required for every customers
organization or IP address combination attached to a PE.
These solutions are both expensive to the customer as
additional equipment is required and also requires extra
network management and provisioning for each customer site.
Multi-VRF CE is an attribute, that provides solutions to
these problems. Multi-VRF CE extends partial PE functionality
to a CE router in an MPLS-VPN network. A CE router now has
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the capability to maintain different VRF tables so that the

privacy and protection of an MPLS-VPN can be extended
down to a branch office of the customer rather than just at the
PE router node.
A VLAN-like configuration is created on the customer side
by CE routers using VRF interfaces. The VRFs present on the
CE router and PE router are then mapped to each other. When
Multi-VRF CE is configured, the CE router is able to configure
the VRF interfaces and its routing tables. Only some of the PE
functionality is shared with the CE router. The CE router
cannot perform functions like label exchange, which is a
feature of MPLS, i.e. MPLS is not enabled on the CE routers.
CE and PE routers share IP enabled communication between
them.
The designed network in this paper illustrates the
connectivity of companies with a large main site and its smaller
sites or departments that are interconnected across an MPLS
VPN network. The main site of the company is large and has
several departments that are required to be separated from each
other for privacy reasons. These departments for example,
sales, marketing, human resources, engineering etc., then
connect to their respective department remote sites through the
MPLS VPN network. This communication is carried using
Multi-VRF MPLS. Only one CE router is required at every end
to manage the departments, thus simplifying provisioning and
network management rather than a multiple CE router solution.
CE router has VRF functionality to provide VPN routing
information and hence there are less routing updates to manage.
Each CE router announces its site's local routes to a PE router,
and learns the remote VPN routes from that PE router. Routing
information is then shared by the PE routers with CE routers by
using static routing or a routing protocol such as BGP,OSPF,
RIPv1, or RIPv2. The PE router maintains VPN routes only
for which it is directly attached. Every VPN is mapped to a
particular VRF. After learning local VPN routes from CEs,
VPN routing information is exchanged between other PE
routers through internal BGP (IBPG).
This paper is organized as follows: Section II illustrates the
previous work done in the MPLS domain. Section III
elaborates the proposed designing for a multiple customer,
multiple site MPLS network, whereas Section IV deals with the
analysis of simulation results. The final section summarizes the
paper.

2nd IEEE International Conference on Engineering and Technology (ICETECH), 17th & 18th March 2016, Coimbatore, TN, India.
II. PREVIOUS WORK
Earlier, if the customers were willing to setup a private link
between their various sites they would request the service
provider for a separate link which was a costly investment.
Also, the customers could not use the same private IP addresses
while connecting to the service provider network as the service
provider could not distinguish between the various customers
or its various departments. When MPLS VPN started getting
implemented, it enabled the service provider to lease private
links to the customer on the same network without any
additional links to be installed. Different departments can be
separated by implementing VLANs on switches in the main
site and mapping each VLAN to a VRF (sub)interface on the
PE router.
Another way to differentiate between the smaller sites or
departments was to have separate CE routers as and when
required for every customers organization or IP address
grouping for a PE router. However, both these solutions are not
optimal now as additional setup is required, making the
network more complex.
III. DESCRIPTION OF PROPOSED NETWORK
A. Motivation
Now, with the ever increasing expansion of companies and
industries, every company has its branches and sites spread all
over the globe. The company needs to have connectivity
between its various sites along with features like privacy and
security. A service providers network should be capable
enough to handle many such companies and its sites in the
same network architecture, satisfying all the needs of its
customers. The use of Multi-VRF enables the service provider
to handle multiple sites on one CE router itself, reducing the

complexity of the network and also making it cost effective.

Every site can connect to its corresponding site, which is
remotely located. Multi-VRF helps the CE routers to maintain
complete privacy and doesnt allow any unwanted interference.
Multi-VRF also offers the usage of same IP addresses in
different sites, i.e. overlapping of IP addresses is possible
amongst different sites.
B. Design scenario of a sample network
The aim of the proposed sample network as shown below
in Fig. 1, is to show how the features of Multi-VRF can be
utilized to connect large companys various sites to each other,
satisfying certain given constraints by customers. The sample
network has two companies: Customer A and B. These two
companies have different departments each namely, Sales,
Marketing, Human Resources and Engineering, which are
spread out at different locations.
CE1 router has connections to company As Sales,
Marketing, HR and Engineering departments.
CE2 router has connections to company Bs Sales and
Marketing departments.
CE3 router has connections to company As Sales, and
Marketing departments.
CE4 router has connections to company Bs Sales,
Marketing, HR and Engineering departments.
CE5 router has connections to company As HR and
Engineering departments.
CE6 router has connections to company Bs HR and
Engineering departments.
This sample network insists on the following constraints:
C1: Customer As and Bs departments should be able
to communicate with their own departments located at
different places.

Figure 1: MPLS Multi-VRF enabled sample network

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2nd IEEE International Conference on Engineering and Technology (ICETECH), 17th & 18th March 2016, Coimbatore, TN, India.

C2: Complete privacy and security should be provided

to the departments, not allowing any other department
of other field to communicate in between.
C3: All the customers and their departments belong to
different Autonomous Systems.
C4: Minimum number of links should be utilized for
communication between these companies and their
sites by the service provider.

C. Proposed Solution
The proposed solution satisfying these constraints can be
shown via emulators like GNS(Graphical Network Simulator)
which is applicable for real-time scenarios. The steps for
designing this network can be shown as below:
S1: VRFs on CE and PE routers
VRF instance is used for each customers every
department in the network to achieve this. The RouteDistinguisher (RD) and Route-Target (RT) are two
different concepts that are both used in an MPLS
VPN. The RD is used to keep all prefixes in the
BGP(Border Gateway Protocol) table unique, and the
RT is used to transfer routes between VRFs/VPNS.
VRFs on CE and PE routers connected to each other
should match with same RTs.
S2: Trunk ports
MPLS Multi-VRF allows different departments to use
the same physical link between the PE and the CE
routers. Trunk ports with several VLANs separate
packets amongst the departments and hence each
department has its own VLAN(Virtual Local Area
Network). This reduces the excess use of links
between CE and PE routers.
S3: Routing protocol for every VRF and between CE
and PE routers
For every VRF on CE and PE routers, a routing
protocol should be configured. Similarly, a routing
protocol should also exist for connectivity between the
CE and PE router. Most routing protocols that are
commonly used are: BGP, OSPF, EIGRP, RIP, and
static routing. In case of OSPF routing protocol, a
subcommand : capability vrf-lite is required under
router ospf at the CE router.
S4: Enable MPLS in the core service provider network
At the core service providers network, it makes no
difference between MPLS Multi-VRF or normal
MPLS VPN that uses multiple CE routers. Hence a
standard MPLS configuration is done at the core
network.
S5: Routing Protocols within the network
Multi-protocol BGP [3][4][7] which allows multiple
address families to be transferred across the network in
parallel should be used for the exchange of customers
routing information.BGP is designed to be the protocol
operating across multiple Autonomous Systems (AS)
and is more suitable for distributing very large amount
of routing information along with label distribution for
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MPLS. This information helps in supporting multiple

customers. Furthermore, to learn the paths and
exchange the LDP(Label Distribution Protocol) labels
in the MPLS network, BGP can be used or any other
routing protocol can be used simultaneously.
S6: Route Reflectors(RR) within the network
The architecture of BGP for the internal neighbor ship
requires full-mesh of connections between all PEs. RR
can be used in order to reduce this amount of iBGP
connections. Following this approach RRs are fully
meshed and rest of the BGP speakers within AS peer
only with this RRs rather than with each other.
IV. SIMULATION RESULTS

The sample scenario was implemented in GNS3 and the

following results were obtained which are satisfying all the
criteria mentioned resulting in a better service provider network
with many real-time features included.
A. VRFs on CE and PE routers
The VRFs configured on CE1, CE4, PE1 and PE4 are as
shown in the figures below:

Figure 2: VRFs implemented on CE1 router

Figure 3: VRFs implemented on CE4 router

Figure 4: VRFs implemented on PE1 router

Figure 5: VRFs implemented on PE4 router

2nd IEEE International Conference on Engineering and Technology (ICETECH), 17th & 18th March 2016, Coimbatore, TN, India.
B. Trunk ports
A FastEthernet link is used between the PE and Multi-VRF
CE router. Each VRF is assigned a subinterface of the link as
shown below for CE1 and CE2 routers.

D. Enable MPLS in the core service provider network

The core MPLS network contains the standard MPLS
commands as shown below for P1 router.

Figure 6: VRF Interfaces on CE1 router

Figure 9: MPLS forwarding table on P1 router

Figure 7: VRF Interfaces on CE2 router

C. Routing protocol for every VRF and between CE and PE

routers
The routing protocol used here is OSPF. The routing table
for CE1 router is as shown below:

E. Routing Protocols within the network

MP-BGP is run only on the PE routers, for connectivity
between the customers and IGP(Internal Gateway Protocol)
like OSPF is run in the MPLS core network to learn all the
paths. Figure shows BGP neighbors on PE2.

Figure 10: BGP neighbors on PE2 router

F. Route Reflectors(RR) within the network

In a MP_BGP MPLS network all PEs should be connected
to each other. In this scenario there are 6 PEs and if all are
supposed to be connected to each other then in all 15 links
would be required which is not affordable to the service
provider. Hence here PE1 and PE2 are declared as RR and
other PEs are supposed to get connected to only either one of
them which shall be called as its client. Here, PE3 and PE4 are
the clients of PE2 and PE5, PE6 are the clients of PE 1 as
shown in fig. below for PE1 router.

Figure 8: OSPF routing protocol for every VRF on CE1 router

978-1-4673-9916-6/16/$31.00 2016 IEEE

2nd IEEE International Conference on Engineering and Technology (ICETECH), 17th & 18th March 2016, Coimbatore, TN, India.
Technological Institute, Mumbai, India for providing the
facilities to carry out our research and project work.
REFERENCES

Figure 11: Route Reflector Clients of PE1 router.

V. CONCLUSION
In todays time it has become must for the service provider
to satisfy all the needs of the customer in limited amount of
resources and in a cost effective way. MPLS Multi-VRF
feature proves to be a prominent solution to many problems
that are faced between the customer and the service provider.
This paper provides a design solution for such a scenario. It can
be seen that privatization and security both are achieved in the
network with minimum links and routers by implementing the
scenario in GNS software.
The use of this design will limit the wastage of links and
instead provide route for every customer at the same instant
and in the same network infrastructure. This in turn will prove
to be cost effective for both the customers and service provider.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
We would like to express our gratitude towards Dr. R.N.
Awale for his crucial guidance and assistance in our project.
We are also thankful to our institute Veermata Jijabai

978-1-4673-9916-6/16/$31.00 2016 IEEE

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