VRF

Virtual Route Forwarding: a logical name to distinguish a network in the MPLS domain

Bridgedomain / Bridge Domain Interface

Bridge Domain/BDI: is a logical interface that allows bidirectional flow of traffic between a Layer-2 bridged network and a Layer-3 routed network.

Cisco Router

CS2R2

Route Target

RT: The route target defines which prefixes get imported and exported on the PE routers. These ‘routes’ are shared amongst peer routers, which in turn update their routing tables. The Route Target is a 64 bit BGP community used to tag prefixes. It tells the PE routers which prefixes it can import.

Route Distinguisher

RD: used to distinguish the same subnet getting from two different customers/sites. The route distinguisher makes a unique VPNv4 address across the MPLS network.

Example: ASn:Site Id or IP:Site Id

In simple terms the route distinguisher is used to create a unique 96 bit address called the VPNv4 address. This ensures that if two customers are running a 10.0.0.0/8 address space, then each company’s address is unique within the MPLS network.

VLAN

Layer 2 topology – switched network

Ethernet Service

Service – customer - here carried in a VLAN

1GB MPLS

An MPLS carrier service that typically traverses an Edge/Core network/s – layer 3