VRF Lite and the "rd route-distinguisher" command

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Can someone elaborate on the use of the command "rd route-distinguisher" in relation to VRF Lite? Everything I am reading seems say that you don't need to worry about this at all if using VRF Lite, it only applies when using MPLs.

I was watching the CCNP show VRF Lite part 1 & part 2 episodes and this command was entered, but I didn't really get a good feel for why or what rules to follow. Some documentation says that it doesn't really matter what you set for the route-distinguisher, as long as you are consistent. Consistent with what?

Regards,
Adam Tyler

@Adam-Tyler said in VRF Lite and the "rd route-distinguisher" command:

rd route-distinguisher

Again another question that fell through the cracks and I just saw today.

Remember that when using VRFs, you can even use the same ip address ranges in the different VRFs. So how do we keep that traffic within the VRF it is supposed to be in? Route Distinguisher. This distinguishes the one set of routes in one VRF from a different VRF. So for example, if you have the 10.0.0.0/24 in VRF 1 and 10.0.0.0/24 VRFs 2. Route distinguishers keeps those separate when moving across the routers.

Thanks Ronnie, would love to see a full lab of this with VRF light and the same subnet used in different VRFs. Let me know if a show comes up that includes it.

-Adam

@Adam-Tyler,

You can try it on your own using the practice labs equipment. We do not have a show with that in it. But let me put it context for you.

Let say you have your network and a possible tenant coming into your building but you're not adding additional equipment and you have to keep the routing tables separate. You find our your tenant is using overlapping ip addresses with your own network. VRFs using the same network range for each VRF is possible and doesn't require your tenant to change their addresses or require you to renumber yours.