In some network environments, VLANs are associated with individual networks or subnetworks. In an IP network, each subnetwork is mapped to an individual VLAN. Configuring VLANs helps control the size of the broadcast domain and keeps local traffic local. However, network devices in different VLANs cannot communicate with one another without a Layer 3 device (router) to route traffic between the VLAN, referred to as inter-VLAN routing. You configure one or more routers to route traffic to the appropriate destination VLAN.

When Host A in VLAN 10 needs to communicate with Host B in VLAN 10, it sends a packet addressed to that host. Switch A forwards the packet directly to Host B, without sending it to the router.

When Host A sends a packet to Host C in VLAN 20, Switch A forwards the packet to the router, which receives the traffic on the VLAN 10 interface. The router checks the routing table, finds the correct outgoing interface, and forwards the packet on the VLAN 20 interface to Switch B. Switch B receives the packet and forwards it to Host C.

Routers and Layer 3 switches can route packets in these ways:

• By using default routing

• By using preprogrammed static routes for the traffic

The switch supports static routes and default routes. It supports RIP for both IPv4 and IPv6 versions.

Static unicast routes are user-defined routes that cause packets moving between a source and a destination to take a specified path. Static routes can be important if the router cannot build a route to a particular destination and are useful for specifying a gateway of last resort to which all unroutable packets are sent.

The switch retains static routes until you remove them. However, you can override static routes with dynamic routing information by assigning administrative distance values. Each dynamic routing protocol has a default administrative distance, as listed in the following table. If you want a static route to be overridden by information from a dynamic routing protocol, set the administrative distance of the static route higher than that of the dynamic protocol.

Static routes that point to an interface are advertised through RIP and other dynamic routing protocols, whether or not static redistribute router configuration commands were specified for those routing protocols. These static routes are advertised because static routes that point to an interface are considered in the routing table to be connected and hence lose their static nature. However, if you define a static route to an interface that is not one of the networks defined in a network command, no dynamic routing protocols advertise the route unless a redistribute static command is specified for these protocols.

When an interface goes down, all static routes through that interface are removed from the IP routing table. When the software can no longer find a valid next hop for the address specified as the forwarding router's address in a static route, the static route is also removed from the IP routing table.

A router might not be able to learn the routes to all other networks. To provide complete routing capability, you can use some routers as smart routers and give the remaining routers default routes to the smart router. (Smart routers have routing table information for the entire internetwork.) These default routes can be dynamically learned or can be configured in the individual routers. Most dynamic interior routing protocols include a mechanism for causing a smart router to generate dynamic default information that is then forwarded to other routers.

If a router has a directly connected interface to the specified default network, the dynamic routing protocols running on that device generate a default route. In RIP, it advertises the pseudonetwork 0.0.0.0.

A router that is generating the default for a network also might need a default of its own. One way a router can generate its own default is to specify a static route to the network 0.0.0.0 through the appropriate device.

When default information is passed through a dynamic routing protocol, no further configuration is required. The system periodically scans its routing table to choose the optimal default network as its default route. In Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (IGRP) networks, there might be several candidate networks for the system default. Cisco routers use administrative distance and metric information to set the default route or the gateway of last resort.

If dynamic default information is not being passed to the system, candidates for the default route are specified with the ip default-network global configuration command. If this network appears in the routing table from any source, it is flagged as a possible choice for the default route. If the router has no interface on the default network, but does have a path to it, the network is considered as a possible candidate, and the gateway to the best default path becomes the gateway of last resort.

The Routing Information Protocol (RIP) is an Interior Gateway Protocol (IGP) created for use in small, homogeneous networks. It is a distance-vector routing protocol that uses broadcast UDP data packets to exchange routing information. The protocol is documented in RFC 1058. You can find detailed information about RIP in IP Routing Fundamentals, published by Cisco Press.

Using RIP, a device sends routing information updates (advertisements) every 30 seconds. If a router does not receive an update from another router for 180 seconds or more, it marks the routes served by that router as unusable. If there is still no update after 240 seconds, the router removes all routing table entries for the non-updating router.

RIP uses hop counts to rate the value of different routes. The hop count is the number of routers that can be traversed in a route. A directly connected network has a hop count of zero; a network with a hop count of 16 is unreachable. This small range (0 to 15) makes RIP unsuitable for large networks.

If the router has a default network path, RIP advertises a route that links the router to the pseudonetwork 0.0.0.0. The 0.0.0.0 network does not exist; it is treated by RIP as a network to implement the default routing feature. The device advertises the default network if a default was learned by RIP or if the router has a gateway of last resort and RIP is configured with a default metric. RIP sends updates to the interfaces in specified networks. If an interface’s network is not specified, it is not advertised in any RIP update.