Routing protocols use a metric to evaluate the best path to the destination. A metric is a standard of measurement, such as a path bandwidth, that routing algorithms use to determine the optimal path to a destination. To aid path determination, routing algorithms initialize and maintain routing tables, that contain route information such as the IP destination address and the address of the next router or next-hop. Destination and next-hop associations tell a router that an IP destination can be reached optimally by sending the packet to a particular router that represents the next-hop on the way to the final destination. When a router receives an incoming packet, it checks the destination address and attempts to associate this address with the next-hop. See the Unicast RIB section for more information about the route table.

Routing tables can contain other information such as the data about the desirability of a path. Routers compare metrics to determine optimal routes, and these metrics differ depending on the design of the routing algorithm used. See the Routing Metrics section.

Routers communicate with one another and maintain their routing tables by transmitting a variety of messages. The routing update message is one of these messages that consists of all or a portion of a routing table. By analyzing routing updates from all other routers, a router can build a detailed picture of the network topology. A link-state advertisement, which is another example of a message sent between routers, informs other routers of the link state of the sending router. You can also use link information to enable routers to determine optimal routes to network destinations. For more information, see the Routing Algorithms section.

In packet switching, a host determines that it must send a packet to another host. Having acquired a router address by some means, the source host sends a packet addressed specifically to the router physical (Media Access Control [MAC]-layer) address but with the IP (network layer) address of the destination host.

The router examines the destination IP address and tries to find the IP address in the routing table. If the router does not know how to forward the packet, it typically drops the packet. If the router knows how to forward the packet, it changes the destination MAC address to the MAC address of the next-hop router and transmits the packet.

The next-hop might be the ultimate destination host or another router that executes the same switching decision process. As the packet moves through the internetwork, its physical address changes, but its protocol address remains constant (see the following figure).

Routing algorithms use many different metrics to determine the best route. Sophisticated routing algorithms can base route selection on multiple metrics

Each routing process has an associated router ID. You can configure the router ID to any interface in the system. If you do not configure the router ID, Cisco NX-OS selects the router ID based on the following criteria:

• Cisco NX-OS prefers loopback0 over any other interface. If loopback0 does not exist, Cisco NX-OS prefers the first loopback interface over any other interface type.

• If you have not configured any loopback interfaces, Cisco NX-OS uses the first interface in the configuration file as the router ID. If you configure any loopback interface after Cisco NX-OS selects the router ID, the loopback interface becomes the router ID. If the loopback interface is not loopback0 and you configure loopback0 later with an IP address, the router ID changes to the IP address of loopback0.

• If the interface that the router ID is based on changes, that new IP address becomes the router ID. If any other interface changes its IP address, there is no router ID change.

An autonomous system (AS) is a network controlled by a single technical administration entity. Autonomous systems divide global external networks into individual routing domains, where local routing policies are applied. This organization simplifies routing domain administration and simplifies consistent policy configuration.

Each autonomous system can support multiple interior routing protocols that dynamically exchange routing information through route redistribution. The Regional Internet Registries assign a unique number to each public autonomous system that directly connects to the Internet. This autonomous system number (AS number) identifies both the routing process and the autonomous system.

Cisco NX-OS supports 4-byte AS numbers. The following table lists the AS number ranges.

Private autonomous system numbers are used for internal routing domains but must be translated by the router for traffic that is routed out to the Internet. You should not configure routing protocols to advertise private autonomous system numbers to external networks. By default, Cisco NX-OS does not remove private autonomous system numbers from routing updates.

Note

The autonomous system number assignment for public and private networks is governed by the Internet Assigned Number Authority (IANA). For information about autonomous system numbers, including the reserved number assignment, or to apply to register an autonomous system number, refer to the following URL:

http://www.iana.org/

A key aspect to measure for any routing algorithm is how much time a router takes to react to network topology changes. When a part of the network changes for any reason, such as a link failure, the routing information in different routers might not match. Some routers will have updated information about the changed topology, other routers will still have the old information. The convergence is the amount of time before all routers in the network have updated, matching routing information. The convergence time varies depending on the routing algorithm. Fast convergence minimizes the chance of lost packets caused by inaccurate routing information.

Routing protocols can use load balancing or equal cost multipath (ECMP) to share traffic across multiple paths.When a router learns multiple routes to a specific network, it installs the route with the lowest administrative distance in the routing table. If the router receives and installs multiple paths with the same administrative distance and cost to a destination, load balancing can occur. Load balancing distributes the traffic across all the paths, sharing the load. The number of paths used is limited by the number of entries that the routing protocol puts in the routing table. Cisco NX-OS supports up to 16 paths to a destination.

The Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP) also supports unequal cost load balancing. For more information, see Configuring EIGRP.

If you have multiple routing protocols configured in your network, you can configure these protocols to share routing information by configuring route redistribution in each protocol. For example, you can configure Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) to advertise routes learned from the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). You can also redistribute static routes into any dynamic routing protocol. The router that is redistributing routes from another protocol sets a fixed route metric for those redistributed routes and avoids the problem of incompatible route metrics between the different routing protocols. For example, routes redistributed from EIGRP into OSPF are assigned a fixed link cost metric that OSPF understands.

Route redistribution also uses an administrative distance (see the Administrative Distance section) to distinguish between routes learned from two different routing protocols. The preferred routing protocol is given a lower administrative distance so that its routes are chosen over routes from another protocol with a higher administrative distance assigned.

An administrative distance is a rating of the trustworthiness of a routing information source. A higher value means a lower trust rating. Typically, a route can be learned through more than one protocol. Administrative distance is used to discriminate between routes learned from more than one protocol. The route with the lowest administrative distance is installed in the IP routing table.

You can use stub routing in a hub-and-spoke network topology, where one or more end (stub) networks are connected to a remote router (the spoke) that is connected to one or more distribution routers (the hub). The remote router is adjacent only to one or more distribution routers. The only route for IP traffic to follow into the remote router is through a distribution router. This type of configuration is commonly used in WAN topologies in which the distribution router is directly connected to a WAN. The distribution router can be connected to many more remote routers. Often, the distribution router is connected to 100 or more remote routers. In a hub-and-spoke topology, the remote router must forward all nonlocal traffic to a distribution router, so it becomes unnecessary for the remote router to hold a complete routing table. Generally, the distribution router sends only a default route to the remote router.

Only specified routes are propagated from the remote (stub) router. The stub router responds to all queries for summaries, connected routes, redistributed static routes, external routes, and internal routes with the message “inaccessible.” A router that is configured as a stub sends a special peer information packet to all neighboring routers to report its status as a stub router.

Any neighbor that receives a packet informing it of the stub status does not query the stub router for any routes, and a router that has a stub peer does not query that peer. The stub router depends on the distribution router to send the proper updates to all peers.

The following figure shows a simple hub-and-spoke configuration.

Stub routing does not prevent routes from being advertised to the remote router. Figure Simple Hub-and-Spoke Network shows that the remote router can access the corporate network and the Internet through the distribution router only. A full route table on the remote router, in this example, serves no functional purpose because the path to the corporate network and the Internet would always be through the distribution router. A larger route table would reduce only the amount of memory required by the remote router. The bandwidth and memory used can be lessened by summarizing and filtering routes in the distribution router. In this network topology, the remote router does not need to receive routes that have been learned from other networks because the remote router must send all nonlocal traffic, regardless of its destination, to the distribution router. To configure a true stub network, you should configure the distribution router to send only a default route to the remote router.

OSPF supports stub areas and EIGRP supports stub routers.

Note

The EIGRP stub routing feature should be used only on stub devices. A stub device is defined as a device connected to the network core or distribution layer through which core transit traffic should not flow. The only route for IP traffic to follow into the remote router is through a distribution router. A stub device should not have any EIGRP neighbors other than distribution devices. Ignoring this restriction will cause undesirable behavior.

Static routes are route table entries that you manually configure. These static routes do not change unless you reconfigure them. Static routes are simple to design and work well in environments where network traffic is relatively predictable and where network design is relatively simple.

Because static routing systems cannot react to network changes, you should not use them for today’s large, constantly changing networks. Most routing protocols today use dynamic routing algorithms, which adjust to changing network circumstances by analyzing incoming routing update messages. If the message indicates that a network change has occurred, the routing software recalculates routes and sends out new routing update messages. These messages permeate the network, triggering routers to rerun their algorithms and change their routing tables accordingly.

You can supplement dynamic routing algorithms with static routes where appropriate. For example, you should configure each subnetwork with a static route to the IP default gateway or router of last resort (a router to which all unrouteable packets are sent).

You can separate networks into unique routing domains or autonomous systems. An autonomous system is a portion of an internetwork under common administrative authority that is regulated by a particular set of administrative guidelines. Routing protocols that route between autonomous systems are called exterior gateway protocols or interdomain protocols. BGP is an example of an exterior gateway protocol. Routing protocols used within an autonomous system are called interior gateway protocols or intradomain protocols. EIGRP and OSPF are examples of interior gateway protocols.

The link-state protocols, also known as shortest path first (SPF), share information with neighboring routers. Each router builds a link-state advertisement (LSA), which contains information about each link and directly connected neighbor router.

Each LSA has a sequence number. When a router receives an LSA and updates its link-state database, the LSA is flooded to all adjacent neighbors. If a router receives two LSAs with the same sequence number (from the same router), the router does not flood the last LSA received to its neighbors to prevent an LSA update loop. Because the router floods the LSAs immediately after they receive them, convergence time for link-state protocols is minimized.

Discovering neighbors and establishing adjacency is an important part of a link state protocol. Neighbors are discovered using special Hello packets that also serve as keepalive notifications to each neighbor router. Adjacency is the establishment of a common set of operating parameters for the link-state protocol between neighbor routers.

The LSAs received by a router are added to its link-state database. Each entry consists of the following parameters:

• Router ID (for the router that originated the LSA)

• Neighbor ID

• Link cost

• Sequence number of the LSA

• Age of the LSA entry

The router runs the SPF algorithm on the link-state database, building the shortest path tree for that router. This SPF tree is used to populate the routing table.

In link-state algorithms, each router builds a picture of the entire network in its routing tables. The link-state algorithms send small updates everywhere, while distance vector algorithms send larger updates only to neighboring routers.

Because they converge more quickly, link-state algorithms are somewhat less prone to routing loops than distance vector algorithms. However, link-state algorithms require more CPU power and memory than distance vector algorithms. Link-state algorithms can be more expensive to implement and support. Link-state protocols are generally more scalable than distance vector protocols.

OSPF is an example of a link-state protocol.

Layer 3 uses either the IPv4 or IPv6 protocol. IPv6 increases the number of network address bits from 32 bits (in IPv4) to 128 bits. For more information, see Configuring IPv4 or Configuring IPv6.

The OSPF protocol is a link-state routing protocol used to exchange network reachability information within an autonomous system. Each OSPF router advertises information about its active links to its neighbor routers. Link information consists of the link type, the link metric, and the neighbor router connected to the link. The advertisements that contain this link information are called link-state advertisements. For more information, see Configuring OSPFv2 or Configuring OSPFv3.

The EIGRP protocol is a unicast routing protocol that has the characteristics of both distance vector and link-state routing protocols. It is an improved version of IGRP, which is a Cisco proprietary routing protocol. EIGRP relies on its neighbors to provide the routes, typical to a distance vector routing protocol. It constructs the network topology from the routes advertised by its neighbors, similar to a link-state protocol, and uses this information to select loop-free paths to destinations. For more information, see Configuring EIGRP.

The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is an inter-autonomous system routing protocol. A BGP router advertises network reachability information to other BGP routers using the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) as its reliable transport mechanism. The network reachability information includes the destination network prefix, a list of autonomous systems that needs to be traversed to reach the destination, and the next-hop router. Reachability information contains additional path attributes such as the preference to a route, origin of the route, community and others. For more information, see Configuring Basic BGP and Configuring Advanced BGP.

Static routing allows you to enter a fixed route to a destination. This feature is useful for small networks where the topology is simple. Static routing is also used with other routing protocols to control default routes and route distribution. For more information, see Configuring Static Routing.

Virtualization allows you to share physical resources across separate management domains.

Cisco NX-OS supports Layer 3 virtualization with VPN Routing and Forwarding (VRF). A VRF provides a separate address domain for configuring Layer 3 routing protocols. For more information, see Configuring Layer 3 Virtualization.

The Route Policy Manager provides a route filtering capability in Cisco NX-OS. It uses route maps to filter routes distributed across various routing protocols and between different entities within a given routing protocol. Filtering is based on specific match criteria, which is similar to packet filtering by access control lists. For more information, see Configuring Route Policy Manager.