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

• By using default routing

• By using preprogrammed static routes for the traffic

• By dynamically calculating routes by using a routing protocol

Default routing refers to sending traffic with a destination unknown to the router to a default outlet or destination.

Static unicast routing forwards packets from predetermined ports through a single path into and out of a network. Static routing is secure and uses little bandwidth, but does not automatically respond to changes in the network, such as link failures, and therefore, might result in unreachable destinations. As networks grow, static routing becomes a labor-intensive liability.

Beginning with Cisco IOS release 12.2(58)SE, switches running the LAN base feature set support 16 user-configured static routes, in addition to any default routes used for the management interface. The LAN base image supports static routing only on SVIs and only when the switch is running the default SDM template.

Dynamic routing protocols are used by routers to dynamically calculate the best route for forwarding traffic. There are two types of dynamic routing protocols:

• Routers using distance-vector protocols maintain routing tables with distance values of networked resources, and periodically pass these tables to their neighbors. Distance-vector protocols use one or a series of metrics for calculating the best routes. These protocols are easy to configure and use.

• Routers using link-state protocols maintain a complex database of network topology, based on the exchange of link-state advertisements (LSAs) between routers. LSAs are triggered by an event in the network, which speeds up the convergence time or time required to respond to these changes. Link-state protocols respond quickly to topology changes, but require greater bandwidth and more resources than distance-vector protocols.

Distance-vector protocols supported by the switch are Routing Information Protocol (RIP), which uses a single distance metric (cost) to determine the best path and Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), which adds a path vector mechanism. The switch also supports the Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) link-state protocol and Enhanced IGRP (EIGRP), which adds some link-state routing features to traditional Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (IGRP) to improve efficiency.

Note	On a switch or switch stack, the supported protocols are determined by the software running on the active switch. If the switch is running the LAN base feature set, you can configure 16 static routes on SVIs. All other routing protocols require the IP services feature set.

A Switch stack appears to the network as a single Switch, regardless of which Switch in the stack is connected to a routing peer.

The stack master performs these functions:

• It initializes and configures the routing protocols.

• It sends routing protocol messages and updates to other routers.

• It processes routing protocol messages and updates received from peer routers.

• It generates, maintains, and distributes the distributed Cisco Express Forwarding (dCEF) database to all stack members. The routes are programmed on all Switch in the stack bases on this database.

• The MAC address of the stack master is used as the router MAC address for the whole stack, and all outside devices use this address to send IP packets to the stack.

• All IP packets that require software forwarding or processing go through the CPU of the stack master.

Stack members perform these functions:

• They act as routing standby Switch, ready to take over in case they are elected as the new stack master if the stack master fails.

• They program the routes into hardware.

If a stack master fails, the stack detects that the stack master is down and elects one of the stack members to be the new stack master. During this period, except for a momentary interruption, the hardware continues to forward packets with no active protocols.

However, even though the Switch stack maintains the hardware identification after a failure, the routing protocols on the router neighbors might flap during the brief interruption before the stack master restarts. Routing protocols such as OSPF and EIGRP need to recognize neighbor transitions.

The router uses two levels of nonstop forwarding (NSF) to detect a Switch over, to continue forwarding network traffic, and to recover route information from peer devices:

• NSF-aware routers tolerate neighboring router failures. After the neighbor router restarts, an NSF-aware router supplies information about its state and route adjacencies on request.

• NSF-capable routers support NSF. When they detect a stack master change, they rebuild routing information from NSF-aware or NSF-capable neighbors and do not wait for a restart.

The Switch stack supports NSF-capable routing for OSPF and EIGRP.

Upon election, the new stack master performs these functions:

• It starts generating, receiving, and processing routing updates.

• It builds routing tables, generates the CEF database, and distributes it to stack members.

• It uses its MAC address as the router MAC address. To notify its network peers of the new MAC address, it periodically (every few seconds for 5 minutes) sends a gratuitous ARP reply with the new router MAC address.

  Note

  If you configure the persistent MAC address feature on the stack and the stack master changes, the stack MAC address does not change for the configured time period. If the previous stack master rejoins the stack as a member Switch during that time period, the stack MAC address remains the MAC address of the previous stack master.

• It attempts to determine the reachability of every proxy ARP entry by sending an ARP request to the proxy ARP IP address and receiving an ARP reply. For each reachable proxy ARP IP address, it generates a gratuitous ARP reply with the new router MAC address. This process is repeated for 5 minutes after a new stack master election.

  Note

  When a stack master is running the IP services feature set, the stack can run all supported protocols, including Open Shortest Path First (OSPF), and Enhanced IGRP (EIGRP) and Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). If the stack master fails and the new elected stack master is running the IP base or LAN base feature set, these protocols will no longer run in the stack.

  Caution

  Partitioning of the Switch stack into two or more stacks might lead to undesirable behavior in the network.

You can optionally configure several OSPF area parameters. These parameters include authentication for password-based protection against unauthorized access to an area, stub areas, and not-so-stubby-areas (NSSAs). Stub areas are areas into which information on external routes is not sent. Instead, the area border router (ABR) generates a default external route into the stub area for destinations outside the autonomous system (AS). An NSSA does not flood all LSAs from the core into the area, but can import AS external routes within the area by redistribution.

Route summarization is the consolidation of advertised addresses into a single summary route to be advertised by other areas. If network numbers are contiguous, you can use the area range router configuration command to configure the ABR to advertise a summary route that covers all networks in the range.

You can optionally configure other OSPF parameters in router configuration mode.

• Route summarization: When redistributing routes from other protocols. Each route is advertised individually in an external LSA. To help decrease the size of the OSPF link state database, you can use the summary-address router configuration command to advertise a single router for all the redistributed routes included in a specified network address and mask.

• Virtual links: In OSPF, all areas must be connected to a backbone area. You can establish a virtual link in case of a backbone-continuity break by configuring two Area Border Routers as endpoints of a virtual link. Configuration information includes the identity of the other virtual endpoint (the other ABR) and the nonbackbone link that the two routers have in common (the transit area). Virtual links cannot be configured through a stub area.

• Default route: When you specifically configure redistribution of routes into an OSPF routing domain, the route automatically becomes an autonomous system boundary router (ASBR). You can force the ASBR to generate a default route into the OSPF routing domain.

• Domain Name Server (DNS) names for use in all OSPF show privileged EXEC command displays makes it easier to identify a router than displaying it by router ID or neighbor ID.

• Default Metrics: OSPF calculates the OSPF metric for an interface according to the bandwidth of the interface. The metric is calculated as ref-bw divided by bandwidth, where ref is 10 by default, and bandwidth (bw ) is specified by the bandwidth interface configuration command. For multiple links with high bandwidth, you can specify a larger number to differentiate the cost on those links.

• Administrative distance is a rating of the trustworthiness of a routing information source, an integer between 0 and 255, with a higher value meaning a lower trust rating. An administrative distance of 255 means the routing information source cannot be trusted at all and should be ignored. OSPF uses three different administrative distances: routes within an area (interarea), routes to another area (interarea), and routes from another routing domain learned through redistribution (external). You can change any of the distance values.

• Passive interfaces: Because interfaces between two devices on an Ethernet represent only one network segment, to prevent OSPF from sending hello packets for the sending interface, you must configure the sending device to be a passive interface. Both devices can identify each other through the hello packet for the receiving interface.

• Route calculation timers: You can configure the delay time between when OSPF receives a topology change and when it starts the shortest path first (SPF) calculation and the hold time between two SPF calculations.

• Log neighbor changes: You can configure the router to send a syslog message when an OSPF neighbor state changes, providing a high-level view of changes in the router.

The OSPF LSA group pacing feature allows the router to group OSPF LSAs and pace the refreshing, check-summing, and aging functions for more efficient router use. This feature is enabled by default with a 4-minute default pacing interval, and you will not usually need to modify this parameter. The optimum group pacing interval is inversely proportional to the number of LSAs the router is refreshing, check-summing, and aging. For example, if you have approximately 10,000 LSAs in the database, decreasing the pacing interval would benefit you. If you have a very small database (40 to 100 LSAs), increasing the pacing interval to 10 to 20 minutes might benefit you slightly.

OSPF uses the highest IP address configured on the interfaces as its router ID. If this interface is down or removed, the OSPF process must recalculate a new router ID and resend all its routing information out its interfaces. If a loopback interface is configured with an IP address, OSPF uses this IP address as its router ID, even if other interfaces have higher IP addresses. Because loopback interfaces never fail, this provides greater stability. OSPF automatically prefers a loopback interface over other interfaces, and it chooses the highest IP address among all loopback interfaces.

EIGRP offers these features:

• Fast convergence.

• Incremental updates when the state of a destination changes, instead of sending the entire contents of the routing table, minimizing the bandwidth required for EIGRP packets.

• Less CPU usage because full update packets need not be processed each time they are received.

• Protocol-independent neighbor discovery mechanism to learn about neighboring routers.

• Variable-length subnet masks (VLSMs).

• Arbitrary route summarization.

• EIGRP scales to large networks.

EIGRP has these four basic components:

• Neighbor discovery and recovery is the process that routers use to dynamically learn of other routers on their directly attached networks. Routers must also discover when their neighbors become unreachable or inoperative. Neighbor discovery and recovery is achieved with low overhead by periodically sending small hello packets. As long as hello packets are received, the Cisco IOS software can learn that a neighbor is alive and functioning. When this status is determined, the neighboring routers can exchange routing information.

• The reliable transport protocol is responsible for guaranteed, ordered delivery of EIGRP packets to all neighbors. It supports intermixed transmission of multicast and unicast packets. Some EIGRP packets must be sent reliably, and others need not be. For efficiency, reliability is provided only when necessary. For example, on a multiaccess network that has multicast capabilities (such as Ethernet), it is not necessary to send hellos reliably to all neighbors individually. Therefore, EIGRP sends a single multicast hello with an indication in the packet informing the receivers that the packet need not be acknowledged. Other types of packets (such as updates) require acknowledgment, which is shown in the packet. The reliable transport has a provision to send multicast packets quickly when there are unacknowledged packets pending. Doing so helps ensure that convergence time remains low in the presence of varying speed links.

• The DUAL finite state machine embodies the decision process for all route computations. It tracks all routes advertised by all neighbors. DUAL uses the distance information (known as a metric) to select efficient, loop-free paths. DUAL selects routes to be inserted into a routing table based on feasible successors. A successor is a neighboring router used for packet forwarding that has a least-cost path to a destination that is guaranteed not to be part of a routing loop. When there are no feasible successors, but there are neighbors advertising the destination, a recomputation must occur. This is the process whereby a new successor is determined. The amount of time it takes to recompute the route affects the convergence time. Recomputation is processor-intensive; it is advantageous to avoid recomputation if it is not necessary. When a topology change occurs, DUAL tests for feasible successors. If there are feasible successors, it uses any it finds to avoid unnecessary recomputation.

• The protocol-dependent modules are responsible for network layer protocol-specific tasks. An example is the IP EIGRP module, which is responsible for sending and receiving EIGRP packets that are encapsulated in IP. It is also responsible for parsing EIGRP packets and informing DUAL of the new information received. EIGRP asks DUAL to make routing decisions, but the results are stored in the IP routing table. EIGRP is also responsible for redistributing routes learned by other IP routing protocols.

  Note	To enable EIGRP, the Switch or stack master must be running the IP services feature set.

Routers that belong to the same autonomous system (AS) and that exchange BGP updates run internal BGP (IBGP), and routers that belong to different autonomous systems and that exchange BGP updates run external BGP (EBGP). Most configuration commands are the same for configuring EBGP and IBGP. The difference is that the routing updates are exchanged either between autonomous systems (EBGP) or within an AS (IBGP). The figure given below shows a network that is running both EBGP and IBGP.

Before exchanging information with an external AS, BGP ensures that networks within the AS can be reached by defining internal BGP peering among routers within the AS and by redistributing BGP routing information to IGPs that run within the AS, such as IGRP and OSPF.

Routers that run a BGP routing process are often referred to as BGP speakers. BGP uses the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) as its transport protocol (specifically port 179). Two BGP speakers that have a TCP connection to each other for exchanging routing information are known as peers or neighbors. In the above figure, Routers A and B are BGP peers, as are Routers B and C and Routers C and D. The routing information is a series of AS numbers that describe the full path to the destination network. BGP uses this information to construct a loop-free map of autonomous systems.

The network has these characteristics:

• Routers A and B are running EBGP, and Routers B and C are running IBGP. Note that the EBGP peers are directly connected and that the IBGP peers are not. As long as there is an IGP running that allows the two neighbors to reach one another, IBGP peers do not have to be directly connected.

• All BGP speakers within an AS must establish a peer relationship with each other. That is, the BGP speakers within an AS must be fully meshed logically. BGP4 provides two techniques that reduce the requirement for a logical full mesh: confederations and route reflectors.

• AS 200 is a transit AS for AS 100 and AS 300—that is, AS 200 is used to transfer packets between AS 100 and AS 300.

BGP peers initially exchange their full BGP routing tables and then send only incremental updates. BGP peers also exchange keepalive messages (to ensure that the connection is up) and notification messages (in response to errors or special conditions).

In BGP, each route consists of a network number, a list of autonomous systems that information has passed through (the autonomous system path), and a list of other path attributes. The primary function of a BGP system is to exchange network reachability information, including information about the list of AS paths, with other BGP systems. This information can be used to determine AS connectivity, to prune routing loops, and to enforce AS-level policy decisions.

A router or Switch running Cisco IOS does not select or use an IBGP route unless it has a route available to the next-hop router and it has received synchronization from an IGP (unless IGP synchronization is disabled). When multiple routes are available, BGP bases its path selection on attribute values. See the “Configuring BGP Decision Attributes” section for information about BGP attributes.

BGP Version 4 supports classless interdomain routing (CIDR) so you can reduce the size of your routing tables by creating aggregate routes, resulting in supernets. CIDR eliminates the concept of network classes within BGP and supports the advertising of IP prefixes.