VRF/MPLS on Linux

Wed Aug 24 10:06:07 UTC 2011

The only issue with this is that the Linux box is not acting as a router, but as the egress devices.  I'm trying to figure out how to properly get my application to 'color' the traffic.  standard BSD sockets appear to have no concept of 'Labels'.  Still seeing what I can do to match the traffic.  I am probably going to see if I can work out a hack with the development team to use DSCP values to tag the traffic and then act accordingly on the ingress router.  I appreciate all the ideas presented so far.                                   

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Brian Raaen                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    
Network Architect                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              
braaen at zcorum.com

On Wed, Aug 24, 2011 at 12:46:54PM +0930, Glen Turner wrote:
> On Tue, 2011-08-23 at 13:45 +0000, nanog at rhemasound.org wrote:
> > While I have found some information on a project called linux-mpls I am having a hard time finding any solid VRF framework for Linux.
> 
> The Linux kernel as shipped by Linus supports multiple routing tables
> and allows you to forward traffic from interfaces to differing tables --
> that is, can implement VRF. The abstraction is better than on most
> routers, with policy routing allowing the selection of the routing table
> (to implement a VRF the policy is a simple "if received on interface X
> then use realm N"). Searching "realms" or running "man ip" will get you
> started.
> 
> The Linus kernel does not have support for MPLS. You could patch the
> kernel, and then use Quagga as the router to populate the MPLS
> forwarding table. But personally, if you have a MPLS-speaking router
> upstream I'd simply bridge each MPLS tunnel into a VLAN to the Linux
> computer. Then you can use a stock vendor kernel, with its lack of
> maintenance hassles.
> 
> -- 
>  Glen Turner <http://www.gdt.id.au/~gdt/>
> 
> 