NETWORK DEVICE VIRTUAL INTERFACE

摘要

A network device (Fig. 1, 10) includes a virtual router subsystem (14, 18) having potentially numerous virtual routers (14) associated with corresponding different virtual private routed networks (VPRN 12-1, 12-2, 12-3) and employing generic interface identifiers to identify interfaces at which VPRN traffic is received or transmitted. A virtual interface subsystem couples the virtual router subsystem to physical interface of the device (14). The virtual interface subsystem includes virtual interfaces organized into linked sets, and each set associates a generic identifier of a virtual router (14) with a physical interface to another network device serving the same VPRN. A basic type of set includes two VIs for interfacting a virtual router to a customer access link (16).