BGP —Border Gateway Protocol. An interdomain routing protocol that replaces External Gateway Protocol (EGP). BGP systems exchange
reachability information with other BGP systems. BGP is defined by RFC 1163.
EGP —Exterior Gateway Protocol. An internet protocol for exchanging routing information between autonomous systems. EGP is documented
in RFC 904. EGP is not to be confused with the general term exterior gateway protocol. EGP is an obsolete protocol that was
replaced by Border Gateway Protocol (BGP).
CE device —customer edge device. A device that is part of a customer network and that interfaces to a provider edge (PE) device.
CSC —Carrier Supporting Carrier. A situation where one service provider allows another service provider to use a segment of its
backbone network. The service provider that provides the segment of the backbone network to the other provider is called the
backbone carrier. The service provider that uses the segment of the backbone network is called the customer carrier.
LDP —Label Distribution Protocol. A standard protocol between Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS)-enabled devices that is uses
in the negotiation of the labels used to forward packets. The Cisco proprietary version of this protocol is the Tag Distribution
Protocol (TDP).
LDP peer —A label switch router (LSR) that is the receiver of label space information from another LSR. If an LSR has a label space
to advertise to another LSR, or to multiple LSRs, one Label Distribution Protocol (LDP) session exists for each LSR (LDP peer)
receiving the label space information.
MD5 —Message Digest 5. A one-way hashing algorithm that produces a 128-bit hash. Both MD5 and Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA) are
variations on MD4 and are designed to strengthen the security of the MD4 hashing algorithm. Cisco uses hashes for authentication
within the IPSec framework. SNMP v2 uses MD5 for message authentication, to verify the integrity of the communication, to
authenticate the message origin, and to check its timeliness.
MPLS —Multiprotocol Label Switching. A switching method that forwards IP traffic through use of labels. Each label instructs the
devices and the switches in the network where to forward a packet based on preestablished IP routing information.
PE device —provider edge device. A device that is part of a service provider’s network connected to a customer edge (CE) device. All
Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) Virtual Private Network (VPN) processing occurs in the PE device.
VPN —Virtual Private Network. Enables IP traffic to travel securely over a public TCP/IP network by encrypting all traffic forwarded
from one network to another. A VPN uses tunneling to encrypt all information at the IP level.
VRF —A VPN routing and forwarding instance. A VRF consists of an IP routing table, a derived forwarding table, a set of interfaces
that use the forwarding table, and a set of rules and routing protocols that determine what goes into the forwarding table.
In general, a VRF includes the routing information that defines a customer VPN site that is attached to a PE device.