Virtual Routers

A Virtual Router is an independent routing domain within a VSX Gateway that performs the functionality of physical routers. Virtual Routers are useful for connecting multiple Virtual Systems to a shared interface, such as the interface leading to the Internet, and for routing traffic from one Virtual System to another. Virtual Routers support dynamic routing.

Virtual Routers perform the following routing functions:

• Packets arriving at the VSX Gateway through a shared interface to the designated Virtual System based on the source or destination IP address.
• Traffic arriving from Virtual Systems directed to a shared interface or to other Virtual Systems.
• Traffic to and from shared network resources such as a DMZ.

As with physical routers, each Virtual Router maintains a routing table with a list of route entries describing known networks and directions on how to reach them. Depending on the deployment requirements, multiple Virtual Routers can be configured.

To protect themselves, Virtual Routers inspect all traffic destined to, or emanating from themselves (for example, an ICMP ping to the Virtual Router IP address) based on the security policy. Traffic that is not sent to, or coming from the Virtual Router is not inspected by the Virtual Router policy and is sent to its destination.