Constrained Route Distribution (or RT Constraint) is a mechanism that allows a router to advertise Route Target membership information to its BGP peers to indicate interest in receiving only VPN routes tagged with specific Route Target extended communities. Upon receiving this information, peers restrict the advertised VPN routes to only those requested, minimizing control plane load in terms of protocol traffic and possibly also RIB memory.
The Route Target membership information is carried using MP-BGP, using an AFI value of 1 and SAFI value of 132. In order for two routers to exchange RT membership NLRI they must advertise the corresponding AFI/SAFI to each other during capability negotiation. The use of MP-BGP means RT membership NLRI are propagated, loop-free, within an AS and between ASes using well-known BGP route selection and advertisement rules.
ORF can also be used for RT-based route filtering, but ORF messages have a limited scope of distribution (to direct peers) and therefore do not automatically create pruned inter-cluster and inter-AS route distribution trees.