RFC 2547b is an extension to the original RFC 2547, BGP/MPLS VPNs, which details a method of distributing routing information using BGP and MPLS forwarding data to provide a Layer 3 Virtual Private Network (VPN) service to end customers.
Each Virtual Private Routed Network (VPRN) consists of a set of customer sites connected to one or more PE routers. Each associated PE router maintains a separate IP forwarding table for each VPRN. Additionally, the PE routers exchange the routing information configured or learned from all customer sites via MP-BGP peering. Each route exchanged via the MP-BGP protocol includes a Route Distinguisher (RD), which identifies the VPRN association and handles the possibility of IP address overlap.
The service provider uses BGP to exchange the routes of a particular VPN among the PE routers that are attached to that VPN. This is done in a way which ensures that routes from different VPNs remain distinct and separate, even if two VPNs have an overlapping address space. The PE routers peer with locally connected CE routers and exchange routes with other PE routers in order to provide end-to-end connectivity between CEs belonging to a given VPN. Since the CE routers do not peer with each other there is no overlay visible to the CEs.
When BGP distributes a VPN route it also distributes an MPLS label for that route. On an SR series router, the method of allocating a label to a VPN route depends on the VPRN label mode and the configuration of the VRF export policy. SR series routers support three label allocation methods: label per VRF, label per next hop, and label per prefix.
Before a customer data packet travels across the service provider's backbone, it is encapsulated with the MPLS label that corresponds, in the customer's VPN, to the route which best matches the packet's destination address. The MPLS packet is further encapsulated with one or additional MPLS labels or GRE tunnel header so that it gets tunneled across the backbone to the proper PE router. Each route exchanged by the MP-BGP protocol includes a route distinguisher (RD), which identifies the VPRN association. Thus the backbone core routers do not need to know the VPN routes. Figure 1 displays a VPRN network diagram example.
