Virtual Routing and Forwarding

So, I'm reading, among other things, Network Warrior by Gary A. Donahue.  In the chapter I'm on now, he briefly talks about VRFs, or Virtual Routing and Forwarding.  This was NOT on the CCNA exam.

My very basic understanding of VRFs is that they are self-contained routing tables within the same router.  So, this ties in with all of the virtualization that is going on now.  According to Donahue, you can have multiple VRFs within a single Virtual Device Context (VDC).  This sounds great, on the surface, but like many things in my educational life, I don't understand WHY I would want that.  I'm sure some network pros out there might read this and scoff, but I am just getting started, so give me a break here.

OK, so when we don't understand something, we go and find out for ourselves.  At least, that's what I feel we should do.  After doing just a bit of reading, the benefit of using a VRF is mainly that you can have overlapping IP addresses with no conflict.  So, one routing table (VRF) instance could have 10.1.23.3 in it, and another routing table (VRF) could have the SAME IP address, with no conflict.  You might want to organize things this way in order to keep customer traffic separate.

The way I would do this now, because I am a recent CCNA, would be by setting up VLANs and ACLs.  This is a great way to go in a lot of instances, but not all.  Hence the utility of VRFs.

I am not yet at a point where I am ready to use this technology, but I think that I am beginning to understand it now.  

Earned my CCNA back in September.  Time to start polishing those skills in anticipation of a job.  Also, been listening to a lot of tech related podcasts.  Just started one about networking in general (NOT Cisco specific) called Packet Pushers.  Much of it is over my head at this time, but that will change.

So, let's do a simple static assignment lab.  As an aside, just updated GNS3 to version 1.1 and now my old templates don't work.  I am missing something here.

Going to use two 3745 router images, because that's what I have.  Two routers, one called New York, and the other called Washington.  Doing this lab from gns3vault.com, so I should probably say that here.  One thing to remember when adding a host name, for any beginners:  the command is hostname "name_of_host".  I used quotation marks around the name, which isn't actually necessary.  Bear in mind, though, that you CANNOT use spaces in the host name.

My task is to set a few static routes.  Got 2 routers, setting up loopback0 ipv4 addresses on both (2.2.2.2/30 on one and 1.1.1.1/30 on the other).  Can ping to 1.1.1.1 but cannot ping to 2.2.2.2.  Will have to see what the problem is.  Not running GNS3 as an administrator?  Trying that now.  All other config seems fine.