How to Configure GRE Tunnel

   Tunneling provides a mechanism to transport packets of one protocol within another protocol. The protocol that is carried is called as the passenger protocol, and the protocol that is used for carrying the passenger protocol is called as the transport protocol. Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE) is one of the available tunneling mechanisms which uses IP as the transport protocol and can be used for carrying many different passenger protocols. The tunnels behave as virtual point-to-point links that have two endpoints identified by the tunnel source and tunnel destination addresses at each endpoint.

The below diagram shows encapsulation process of GRE packet as it traversers the router and enters the tunnel interface:

Configuring GRE Tunnel

Configuring a GRE tunnel involves creating a tunnel interface, which is a logical interface. Then you must configure the tunnel endpoints for the tunnel interface.

 To configure the tunnel source and destination, issue the tunnel source {ip-address | interface-type} and tunnel destination {host-name | ip-address} commands under the interface configuration mode for the tunnel.

 The below example explain about how to create simple GRE tunnels between endpoints and the necessary steps to create and verify the GRE tunnel between the two networks.R1's and R2's Internal subnets(192.168.1.0/24 and 192.168.2.0/24) are  communicating with each other using GRE tunnel over internet.Both Tunnel interfaces are part of the 172.16.1.0/24 network.

First step is to create our tunnel interface on R1 and R2 :

R1(config)# interface Tunnel1

R1(config-if)# ip address 172.16.1.1 255.255.255.0

R1(config-if)# ip mtu 1400

R1(config-if)# ip tcp adjust-mss 1360

R1(config-if)# tunnel source 1.1.1.1

R1(config-if)# tunnel destination 2.2.2.2

R2(config)# interface Tunnel1

R2(config-if)# ip address 172.16.1.2 255.255.255.0

R2(config-if)# ip mtu 1400

R2(config-if)# ip tcp adjust-mss 1360

R2(config-if)# tunnel source 2.2.2.2

R2(config-if)# tunnel destination 1.1.1.1

Since GRE is an encapsulating protocol, we adjust the maximum transfer unit (mtu) to 1400 bytes and maximum segment size (mss) to 1360 bytes. Because most transport MTUs are 1500 bytes and we have an added overhead because of GRE, we must reduce the MTU to account for the extra overhead. A setting of 1400 is a common practice and will ensure unnecessary packet fragmentation is kept to a minimum.

After configuring tunnel,two tunnel endpoints can see each other can verify using an icmp echo from one end.

R1# ping 172.16.1.2

Type escape sequence to abort.

Sending 5, 100-byte ICMP Echos to 172.16.1.2, timeout is 2 seconds:

!!!!!

Success rate is 100 percent (5/5), round-trip min/avg/max = 1/2/4 ms

Workstations on either network will still not be able to reach the other side unless a routing is configure on each router.Here We will configure static route on both router.

R1(config)# ip route 192.168.2.0 255.255.255.0 172.16.1.2

R2(config)# ip route 192.168.1.0 255.255.255.0 172.16.1.1

Now both networks (192.168.1.0/24 and 192.168.2.0/24) are able to freely communicate with each other over the GRE Tunnel .