SRX

can anyone give practical differences between VRF and VR ?

What can be done using VRF and can't be in VR ?

 zas71

that's a question i would like to get answer to myself.

I believe a VRF is more used for L2/L3 VPNs and the like, as it requires you to configure a Route Target and Route Distinguisher

a Virtual Router is just a separate routing table

if someone has more insight please feel free -- that's my very basic understanding of them 🙂

Will

Wimclend, you've got it precisely

VRF is used in an MPLS/VPN architecture like you said and virtual router is used to have separate routing table in the other cases (without MPLS core)

That's all

---

@Loup2 wrote:

Wimclend, you've got it precisely

 

VRF is used in an MPLS/VPN architecture like you said and virtual router is used to have separate routing table in the other cases (without MPLS core)

 

That's all

---

That's a very concise answer 

There are more subtle differences which are derived from this fact above:

1/ OSPF inside VRF automatically sets DN-bit and route-tag whereas OSPF inside VR does not

2/ VRF automatically imports MP-BGP routes with matching route-target, VR does not

3/ usually packets from the core enter VRF based on VPN label whereas to put packets from inet.0 into VR you need to explicitly configure FBF or logical-tunnel(s) between inet.0 and VR

HTH

Regards

Alex

thanks for the replies

Like others said VRF is used with MPLS.  To map the logic to cisco's wording, virtual-router is like vrf-lite.