Hello David
Yes, you’re correct in your understanding that the MPLS network is technically transparent to the two customers. It does indeed appear as if they were directly connected and just exchanged this prefix. This is the “magic” of MPLS.
As for your question about the routes appearing as internal despite being redistributed, this is because of the nature of EIGRP and how it classifies routes. You are correct that when a route is redistributed into EIGRP, it’s classified as an external route. However, in this case, the BGP VPNv4 routes are not being redistributed directly into EIGRP. Instead, they’re being imported into the VRF and then redistributed into EIGRP. Notice the redistribute command is being applied under the IPv4 address family VRF Customer configuration mode and not directly under the router eigrp 1 configuration mode. This causes the routes to appear as internal because, as far as EIGRP is concerned, they’re originating from within the VRF.
This behavior is not specific to MPLS but it is specific to VRFs. It has to do with how EIGRP handles redistributed routes from VRFs. The key factor here is that the routes are being imported into the VRF before they’re redistributed into EIGRP, which is why they’re appearing as internal routes.
A similar issue appears with OSPF. When redistribution is applied, you would initially expect O E1 or O E2 routers (external), but you don’t, and this is due to the same reason that I explained above for EIGRP. However, what is “strange” is that you actually get an O AI route which is an inter-area route, even though both CE1 and CE2 are in the same OSPF area. The reasoning behind this, which is actually quite interesting, is explained in the Verification section of this lesson:
I hope this has been helpful!
Laz