In an MPLS VPN configuration, the OSPF protocol is one way you can connect customer edge (CE) routers to service provider edge (PE) routers in the VPN backbone. OSPF is often used by customers who run OSPF as their intrasite routing protocol, subscribe to a VPN service, and want to exchange routing information between their sites using OSPF (during migration or on a permanent basis) over an MPLS VPN backbone.

The figure below shows an example of how VPN client sites that run OSPF can connect over an MPLS VPN backbone.

When OSPF is used to connect PE and CE routers, all routing information learned from a VPN site is placed in the VPN routing and forwarding (VRF) instance associated with the incoming interface. The PE routers that attach to the VPN use the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) to distribute VPN routes to each other. A CE router can then learn the routes to other sites in the VPN by peering with its attached PE router. The MPLS VPN superbackbone provides an additional level of routing hierarchy to interconnect the VPN sites running OSPF.

When OSPF routes are propagated over the MPLS VPN backbone, additional information about the prefix in the form of BGP extended communities (route type, domain ID extended communities) is appended to the BGP update. This community information is used by the receiving PE router to decide the type of link-state advertisement (LSA) to be generated when the BGP route is redistributed to the OSPF PE-CE process. In this way, internal OSPF routes that belong to the same VPN and are advertised over the VPN backbone are seen as interarea routes on the remote sites.

For basic information about how to configure an MPLS VPN, refer to the Cisco IOS XE MPLS Configuration Guide, Release 2.

Although OSPF PE-CE connections assume that the only path between two client sites is across the MPLS VPN backbone, backdoor paths between VPN sites (shown in grey in the figure below) may exist. If these sites belong to the same OSPF area, the path over a backdoor link will always be selected because OSPF prefers intraarea paths to interarea paths. (PE routers advertise OSPF routes learned over the VPN backbone as interarea paths.) For this reason, OSPF backdoor links between VPN sites must be taken into account so that routing is performed based on policy.

For example, the figure above shows three client sites, each with backdoor links. Because each site runs OSPF within the same Area 1 configuration, all routing between the three sites follows the intraarea path across the backdoor links, rather than over the MPLS VPN backbone.

The following example shows BGP routing table entries for the prefix 10.3.1.7/32 in the PE-1 router in the figure above. This prefix is the loopback interface of the Winchester CE router. As shown in bold in this example, the loopback interface is learned via BGP from PE-2 and PE-3. It is also generated through redistribution into BGP on PE-1.

PE-1# show ip bgp vpnv4 all 10.3.1.7
BGP routing table entry for 100:251:10.3.1.7/32, version 58
Paths: (3 available, best #2)
  Advertised to non peer-group peers:
  10.3.1.2 10.3.1.5 
  Local
    10.3.1.5 (metric 30) from 10.3.1.5 (10.3.1.5)
      Origin incomplete, metric 22, localpref 100, valid, internal
      Extended Community: RT:1:793 OSPF DOMAIN ID:0.0.0.100 OSPF
      RT:1:2:0 OSPF 2
  Local
    10.2.1.38 from 0.0.0.0 (10.3.1.6)
      Origin incomplete, metric 86, localpref 100, weight 32768,
      valid, sourced, best
      Extended Community: RT:1:793 OSPF DOMAIN ID:0.0.0.100 OSPF
      RT:1:2:0 OSPF 2
  Local
    10.3.1.2 (metric 30) from 10.3.1.2 (10.3.1.2)
      Origin incomplete, metric 11, localpref 100, valid, internal
      Extended Community: RT:1:793 OSPF DOMAIN ID:0.0.0.100 OSPF
      RT:1:2:0 OSPF 2

Within BGP, the locally generated route (10.2.1.38) is considered to be the best route. However, as shown in bold in the next example, the VRF routing table shows that the selected path is learned via OSPF with a next hop of 10.2.1.38, which is the Vienna CE router.

PE-1# show ip route vrf ospf 10.3.1.7
Routing entry for 10.3.1.7/32
  Known via "ospf 100", distance 110, metric 86, type intra area
  Redistributing via bgp 215
  Advertised by bgp 215
  Last update from 10.2.1.38 on Serial0/0/0, 00:00:17 ago
  Routing Descriptor Blocks:
  * 10.2.1.38
, from 10.3.1.7, 00:00:17 ago, via Serial0/0/0
      Route metric is 86, traffic share count is 1

This path is selected because:

• The OSPF intra-area path is preferred over the interarea path (over the MPLS VPN backbone) generated by the PE-1 router.

• OSPF has a lower administrative distance (AD) than internal BGP (BGP running between routers in the same autonomous system).

If the backdoor links between sites are used only for backup purposes and do not participate in the VPN service, then the default route selection shown in the preceding example is not acceptable. To reestablish the desired path selection over the MPLS VPN backbone, you must create an additional OSPF intra-area (logical) link between ingress and egress VRFs on the relevant PE routers. This link is called a sham-link.

A sham-link is required between any two VPN sites that belong to the same OSPF area and share an OSPF backdoor link. If no backdoor link exists between the sites, no sham-link is required.

The figure below shows a sample sham-link between PE-1 and PE-2. A cost is configured with each sham-link and is used to decide whether traffic will be sent over the backdoor path or the sham-link path. When a sham-link is configured between PE routers, the PEs can populate the VRF routing table with the OSPF routes learned over the sham-link.

Because the sham-link is seen as an intra-area link between PE routers, an OSPF adjacency is created and database exchange (for the particular OSPF process) occurs across the link. The PE router can then flood LSAs between sites from across the MPLS VPN backbone. As a result, the desired intra-area connectivity is created.