MPLS vs VRF-Lite

dmlierman · ‎03-05-2006

I understand the basics of MPLS but having a little difficulty understanding why and where you would use VRF-Lite instead of MPLS.

What are the basic differences between the two?

Does VRF-Lite support QoS?

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pkhatri · ‎03-05-2006

Hi,

While VRF-Lite uses the concepts of VRFs, just as MPLS VPNs do, there is no relationship between MPLS and VRF-Lite. VRF-Lite allows routing table separation on routers and does not require MPLS to be enabled at all.

VRF-Lite would typically be used on CE devices for things such as the following:

- separate routing tables for Internet and Private network routes

- use of overlapping address space on CEs

While you can use MPLS on cE devices, there is usually no real reason to do so. Also, MPLS is usually only available in advanced feature sets whereas VRF-Lite is available in most of the IP Base images.

MPLS VPNs provide a distributed mechanism to advertise routes for VPNs across an rfc2547bis network whereas VRF-Lite is just a local configuration mechanism on routers.

YOu can use pretty much all QoS features using VRF-Lite as you can when using MPLS VPNs. The difference is that MPLS VPN traffic is tagged; when using VRF-Lite, traffic is not tagged.

Hope that helps - pls rate the post if it does.

Paresh