15 tunneling configuration, Tunneling overview, Introduction to the tunneling technology – H3C Technologies H3C S7500E Series Switches User Manual
Page 158: Tunneling configuration

15-1
15
Tunneling Configuration
When configuring tunneling, go to these sections for information you are interested in:
z
z
Tunneling Configuration Task List
z
Configuring an IPv6 Manual Tunnel
z
z
z
Configuring an IPv4 over IPv4 Tunnel
z
Configuring an IPv4 over IPv6 Tunnel
z
Configuring an IPv6 over IPv6 Tunnel
z
Configuring a GRE over IPv4 Tunnel
z
Configuring a GRE over IPv6 Tunnel
z
Displaying and Maintaining Tunneling Configuration
z
Troubleshooting Tunneling Configuration
Tunneling Overview
Introduction to the Tunneling Technology
Tunneling is an encapsulation technology, which utilizes one network protocol to encapsulate packets
of another network protocol and transfer them over the network. A tunnel is a virtual point-to-point
connection providing a channel to transfer encapsulated packets. Packets are encapsulated and
decapsulated at both ends of a tunnel. Tunneling refers to the whole process from data encapsulation
to data transfer to data decapsulation.
Tunneling provides the following:
z
Transition techniques, such as IPv6 over IPv4 tunneling, to interconnect IPv4 and IPv6 networks.
z
Virtual private networks (VPNs) for guaranteeing communication security, such as generic routing
encapsulation (GRE) and dynamic virtual private network (DVPN).
z
Traffic engineering, such as multiprotocol label switching traffic engineering (MPLS TE), thus
preventing network congestion.
The preceding tunneling technologies require that you create virtual Layer 3 interfaces (tunnel
interfaces) at both ends of a tunnel, so that devices at both ends can send, identify, and process
packets transferred through the tunnel.