VXLAN vs GRE: Detailed Comparability

November 2, 2022

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As enterprises are shifting to cloud computing infrastructures, there’s a drastic change in the way in which community applied sciences have been emerged to maintain up the tempo with calls for of excessive scalable and performance-oriented infrastructure, safe and redundant infrastructure the idea of virtualization can be seeped in networks which is the spine for any computing surroundings be it on premises or cloud hosted.

Gone are the times of heavy community gear and it’s changed with software program outlined networking processes to mix {hardware} and software program right into a single digital community. As applied sciences evolving so is the tunnelling protocols.

As we speak we glance extra intimately about two hottest VLAN or digital LAN tunnelling applied sciences specifically VXLAN (Digital intensive LAN) and GRE (Generic routing encapsulation), their variations (VXLAN vs GRE), options and use circumstances.

VXLAN is community digital expertise for LAN expansions. It’s meant to resolve problems with inadequate digital networking in giant scale cloud deployments and used to leverage VLANs to separate cloud functions and tenants in cloud environments.

VLAN solely permits as much as 4096 community IDs to be assigned at a selected time which is poor w.r.t to giant cloud computing environments. So VXLAN was designed to increase the VLAN tackle area by addition of 24-bit section ID to extend the variety of accessible IDs to 16 million with logical secluding of tenants and cloud functions.

Hundreds of thousands of layer 2 VXLAN networks can coexist on layer 3 infrastructure. In dynamic VM migrations MAC and IP addresses want to stay unchanged earlier than and after migration and the place VXLAN performs a vital function.

In above diagram a VXLAN tunnel is established between two rack switches to encapsulate unique information body despatched from supply into VXLAN packet and enabling unique information frames to transmit onto IP community, TOR swap decapsulates the packets into unique information body earlier than forwarding them to vacation spot server.

Packet construction of VXLAN

Generic routing encapsulation or GRE is an IP encapsulation protocol meant for transporting IP packets over a community. It was developed by Cisco however later turned an trade customary (RFC 1701, RFC 2784, and RFC 2890).

It may possibly tunnel any layer 3 protocol together with IP. GRE permits routing of IP packets between personal IPv4 networks that are segregated over public IPv4 Web. It additionally helps encapsulating IPv4 broadcast and multicast visitors.

Makes use of of GRE

GRE can be utilized to move video, web site visitors.
It permits unsupported protocols to be transported throughout a community to its vacation spot like IPv6 communication over IPv4 community.
It gives DDoS safety.
It creates a digital hyperlink between two networks for routing and allows BGP communication amongst a number of networks with out requiring a bodily connectivity to one another as in case of standard web exchanges.

Within the above diagram GRE is used to encapsulate visitors between two websites. Site visitors will traverse throughout open Web as tunnels don’t encrypt visitors by itself, you should use encrypted tunnelling utilizing VPN software program additionally GRE tunnels are stateless therefore vacation spot is rarely made conscious of this till the incoming information arrives at given vacation spot.

All GRE packets embody each supply and vacation spot tackle to ship information forwards and backwards.

GRE IP Datagram

Comparability: VXLAN vs GRE

The important thing factors of variations between the 2 are:

VxLAN is used to create the overlay networks whereas GRE is used for tunnelling framework over IP community.
VxLAN is level to multi-point tunnel whereas GRE is level to level tunnel.
VxLAN is used for community virtualization whereas GRE is used with VPN apps to offer a safe connection.
VxLAN works at layer 2 of OSI mannequin whereas GRE works at layer 3 of OSI mannequin.
Each assist completely different web requirements when it comes to RFC.

Beneath desk summarizes the factors of comparability between the 2 i.e. VxLAN vs GRE