What is GRE tunneling?

What is GRE?
Generic Routing Encapsulation, or GRE, is a protocol for encapsulating data packets that use one routing protocol inside the packets of another protocol. “Encapsulating” means wrapping one data packet within another data packet, like putting a box inside another box. GRE is one way to set up a direct point-to-point connection across a network, for the purpose of simplifying connections between separate networks. It works with a variety of network layer protocols.

GRE enables the usage of protocols that are not normally supported by a network, because the packets are wrapped within other packets that do use supported protocols. To understand how this works, think about the difference between a car and a ferry. A car travels over roads on land, while a ferry travels over water. A car cannot normally travel on water — however, a car can be loaded onto a ferry in order to do so.

For instance, suppose a company needs to set up a connection between the local area networks (LANs) in their two different offices. Both LANs use the latest version of the Internet Protocol, IPv6. But in order to get from one office network to another, traffic must pass through a network managed by a third party — which is somewhat outdated and only supports the older IPv4 protocol.

With GRE, the company could send traffic through this network by encapsulating IPv6 packets within IPv4 packets. 

What does GRE tunneling mean?
Encapsulating packets within other packets is called “tunneling.” GRE tunnels are usually configured between two routers, with each router acting like one end of the tunnel. The routers are set up to send and receive GRE packets directly to each other. Any routers in between those two routers will not open the encapsulated packets; they only reference the headers surrounding the encapsulated packets in order to forward them.

To understand why this is called “tunneling,” we can change the analogy slightly. If a car needs to pass from Point A on one side of a mountain to Point B on the other side, the most efficient way is to simply go through the mountain. However, ordinary cars are not capable of going straight through solid rock. As a result, the car has to drive all the way around the mountain to get from Point A to Point B.

But imagine that a tunnel was created through the mountain. Now, the car can drive straight from Point A to Point B, which is much faster, and which it could not do without the tunnel.

Now, think of Point A as a networked device, Point B as another networked device, the mountain as the network in between the two devices, and the car as the data packets that need to go from Point A to Point B. Imagine this network does not support the kind of data packets that the devices at Points A and B need to exchange. Like a car trying to go through a mountain, the data packets cannot pass through and may need to take a much longer way around via additional networks.

But GRE creates a virtual “tunnel” through the “mountain” network in order to allow the data packets to pass through. Just as a tunnel creates a way for cars to go straight through land, GRE (and other tunneling protocols) creates a way for data packets to go through a network that does not support them.

Qixiang industrial grade cellular router support GRE chunneling. Contact egineer to learn more.

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