Virtual routing and forwarding (VRF) is a technology that allows multiple routing table instances to co-exist within the same router at the same time. Because Internet service providers (ISPs) often take advantage of VRFs to create separate virtual private networks (VPNs) for customers, the technology is also referred to as VPN routing and forwarding. With VRF support in Kentik Detect, you no longer need to manually map interface names and descriptions to VRF names and IDs (which are hard to read, troubleshoot, and support). Instead, flow data is enriched with VRF identifiers as it’s ingested into the KDE, enabling the use of VRF attributes to filter or segment network traffic in your Kentik queries.

The first phase of our VRF implementation includes support for Cisco L3VPN, Cisco VRF-lite, and Juniper L3VPN. As shown in the screenshot below, there are eight new dimensions associated with VRF support: source and destination VRF Name, VRF Route Distinguisher, VRF Route Target, and VRF Extended Route Distinguisher.

Our new VRF functionality enables multiple use cases:

• An enterprise network can verify that VRF-lite network partitions are functioning correctly (e.g. to ensure there is no traffic leaking).
• An infrastructure/network planner can see inbound or outbound traffic at the Provider Edge (PE) segmented by VRFs.
• A network operator can see all traffic associated with a specific Route Distinguisher (RD) or verify the names of the VRFs that are associated with a specific RD.
• A network operator can get alerts for changes (e.g. increase/decrease) in traffic volume per customer using VRF IDs to distinguish customers at the PE

The screenshot below shows a Sankey graph and table with all of the details about how VRFs map to interfaces on network devices. With this view, network teams can accelerate troubleshooting and easily answer questions about how traffic maps to VRFs.

As shown below, the new VRF dimensions are also supported in Alert Policies.

As we extend our VRF capabilities going forward we’ll be able to provide an even richer set of insights for analytics and visibility, including deeper integration with per-VRF BGP routing data and Kentik’s existing Ultimate Exit feature. For more information, please see the listing of VRF dimensions in our Knowledge Base, or contact our Customer Success team.