Routing Basics
ISP/IXP Workshops
Session Number Presentation_ID
2005 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
Cisco Confidential
Routing Concepts
IPv4 Routing Forwarding Some definitions Policy options Routing Protocols
Cisco ISP Workshops
2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
IPv4
Internet uses IPv4
addresses are 32 bits long range from 1.0.0.0 to 223.255.255.255 0.0.0.0 to 0.255.255.255 and 224.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.255 have special uses
IPv4 address has a network portion and a host portion
Cisco ISP Workshops
2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
IPv4 address format
Address and subnet mask
written as 12.34.56.78 255.255.255.0 or 12.34.56.78/24 mask represents the number of network bits in the 32 bit address the remaining bits are the host bits
Cisco ISP Workshops
2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
What does a router do?
Cisco ISP Workshops
2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
A day in a life of a router
find path forward packet, forward packet, forward packet, forward packet... find alternate path forward packet, forward packet, forward packet, forward packet repeat until powered off
Cisco ISP Workshops
2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
Routing versus Forwarding
Routing = building maps and giving directions Forwarding = moving packets between interfaces according to the directions
Cisco ISP Workshops
2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
IP Routing finding the path
Path derived from information received from a routing protocol Several alternative paths may exist
best next hop stored in forwarding table
Decisions are updated periodically or as topology changes (event driven) Decisions are based on:
topology, policies and metrics (hop count, filtering, delay, bandwidth, etc.)
Cisco ISP Workshops
2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
IP route lookup
Based on destination IP address longest match routing
more specific prefix preferred over less specific prefix example: packet with destination of 10.1.1.1/32 is sent to the router announcing 10.1/16 rather than the router announcing 10/8.
Cisco ISP Workshops
2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
IP route lookup
Based on destination IP address
R3 Packet: Destination IP address: 10.1.1.1 All 10/8 except 10.1/16
R1
R2 10/8 R3 10.1/16 R4 20/8 R5 30/8 R6 .. R2s IP routing table
R4 10.1/16
Cisco ISP Workshops
2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
10
IP route lookup: Longest match routing
Based on destination IP address
R3 Packet: Destination IP address: 10.1.1.1 All 10/8 except 10.1/16
R1 10/8 R3 10.1/16 R4 20/8 R5 30/8 R6 ..
R2
R4 10.1/16
10.1.1.1 && FF.0.0.0 vs. Match! 10.0.0.0 && FF.0.0.0
R2s IP routing table
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IP route lookup: Longest match routing
Based on destination IP address
R3 Packet: Destination IP address: 10.1.1.1 All 10/8 except 10.1/16
R1 10/8 R3 10.1/16 R4 20/8 R5 30/8 R6 ..
R2
R4
10.1/16 10.1.1.1 && FF.FF.0.0 Match as well! vs. 10.1.0.0 && FF.FF.0.0
R2s IP routing table
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IP route lookup: Longest match routing
Based on destination IP address
R3 Packet: Destination IP address: 10.1.1.1 All 10/8 except 10.1/16
R1 10/8 R3 10.1/16 R4 20/8 R5 30/8 R6 ..
R2
R4 10.1/16
10.1.1.1 && FF.0.0.0 Does not match! vs. 20.0.0.0 && FF.0.0.0
R2s IP routing table
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IP route lookup: Longest match routing
Based on destination IP address
R3 Packet: Destination IP address: 10.1.1.1 All 10/8 except 10.1/16
R1 10/8 R3 10.1/16 R4 20/8 R5 30/8 R6 ..
R2
R4 10.1/16
10.1.1.1 && FF.0.0.0 vs. Does not match! 30.0.0.0 && FF.0.0.0
R2s IP routing table
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IP route lookup: Longest match routing
Based on destination IP address
R3 Packet: Destination IP address: 10.1.1.1 All 10/8 except 10.1/16
R1 10/8 R3 10.1/16 R4 20/8 R5 30/8 R6 ..
R2
R4 10.1/16
Longest match, 16 bit netmask
R2s IP routing table
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IP Forwarding
Router makes decision on which interface a packet is sent to Forwarding table populated by routing process Forwarding decisions:
destination address class of service (fair queuing, precedence, others) local requirements (packet filtering)
Can be aided by special hardware
Cisco ISP Workshops
2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
16
Routing Tables Feed the Forwarding Table
Routing Information Base (RIB)
BGP 4 Routing Table
Forward Table (FIB)
OSPF Link State Database
Static Routes
Cisco ISP Workshops
2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
17
RIBs and FIBs
FIB is the Forwarding Table
It contains destinations and the interfaces to get to those destinations Used by the router to figure out where to send the packet Careful! Some people call this a route!
RIB is the Routing Table
It contains a list of all the destinations and the various next hops used to get to those destinations and lots of other information too! One destination can have lots of possible next-hops only the best next-hop goes into the FIB
Cisco ISP Workshops
2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
18
Explicit versus Default Routing
Default:
simple, cheap (cycles, memory, bandwidth) low granularity (metric games)
Explicit (default free zone)
high overhead, complex, high cost, high granularity
Hybrid
minimise overhead provide useful granularity requires some filtering knowledge
Cisco ISP Workshops
2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
19
Egress Traffic
How packets leave your network Egress traffic depends on:
route availability (what others send you) route acceptance (what you accept from others) policy and tuning (what you do with routes from others) Peering and transit agreements
Cisco ISP Workshops
2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
20
Ingress Traffic
How packets get to your network and your customers networks Ingress traffic depends on:
what information you send and to whom based on your addressing and ASs based on others policy (what they accept from you and what they do with it)
Cisco ISP Workshops
2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
21
Autonomous System (AS)
AS 100
Collection of networks with same routing policy Single routing protocol Usually under single ownership, trust and administrative control
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Definition of terms
Neighbours
ASs which directly exchange routing information Routers which exchange routing information
Announce
send routing information to a neighbour
Accept
receive and use routing information sent by a neighbour
Originate
insert routing information into external announcements (usually as a result of the IGP)
Peers
routers in neighbouring ASs or within one AS which exchange routing and policy information
23
Cisco ISP Workshops
2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
Routing flow and packet flow
packet flow
AS 1
accept announce
routing flow packet flow
announce accept
AS 2
For networks in AS1 and AS2 to communicate:
AS1 must announce to AS2 AS2 must accept from AS1 AS2 must announce to AS1 AS1 must accept from AS2
Cisco ISP Workshops
2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
24
Routing flow and Traffic flow
Traffic flow is always in the opposite direction of the flow of Routing information
Filtering outgoing routing information inhibits traffic flow inbound Filtering inbound routing information inhibits traffic flow outbound
Cisco ISP Workshops
2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
25
Routing Flow/Packet Flow: With multiple ASes
AS 1 N1
AS 34 AS16 AS 8 N16
For net N1 in AS1 to send traffic to net N16 in AS16:
AS16 must originate and announce N16 to AS8. AS8 must accept N16 from AS16. AS8 must announce N16 to AS1 or AS34. AS1 must accept N16 from AS8 or AS34.
For two-way packet flow, similar policies must exist for N1.
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Routing Flow/Packet Flow: With multiple ASes
AS 1 N1
AS 34 AS16 AS 8 N16
As multiple paths between sites are implemented it is easy to see how policies can become quite complex.
Cisco ISP Workshops
2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
27
Routing Policy
Used to control traffic flow in and out of an ISP network ISP makes decisions on what routing information to accept and discard from its neighbours
Individual routes Routes originated by specific ASes Routes traversing specific ASes Routes belonging to other groupings
Groupings which you define as you see fit
Cisco ISP Workshops
2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
28
Routing Policy Limitations
red
red
Internet
green green packet flow
AS99
AS99 uses red link for traffic to the red AS and the green link for remaining traffic To implement this policy, AS99 has to:
Accept routes originating from the red AS on the red link Accept all other routes on the green link
Cisco ISP Workshops
2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
29
Routing Policy Limitations
red
Internet
AS22
red
AS99
green
green packet flow
AS99 would like packets coming from the green AS to use the green link. But unless AS22 cooperates in pushing traffic from the green AS down the green link, there is very little that AS99 can do to achieve this aim
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Routing Policy Issues
191000 prefixes (not realistic to set policy on all of them individually) 22500 origin ASs (too many) routes tied to a specific AS or path may be unstable regardless of connectivity groups of ASs are a natural abstraction for filtering purposes
Cisco ISP Workshops
2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
31
Routing Protocols
We now know what routing means but what do the routers get up to? And why are we doing this anyway?
Session Number Presentation_ID
2005 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
Cisco Confidential
32
1: How Does Routing Work?
Internet is made up of the ISPs who connect to each others networks How does an ISP in Kenya tell an ISP in Japan what customers they have? And how does that ISP send data packets to the customers of the ISP in Japan, and get responses back
After all, as on a local ethernet, two way packet flow is needed for communication between two devices
Cisco ISP Workshops
2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
33
2: How Does Routing Work?
ISP in Kenya could buy a direct connection to the ISP in Japan
But this doesnt scale thousands of ISPs, would need thousands of connections, and cost would be astronomical
Instead, ISP in Kenya tells his neighbouring ISPs what customers he has
And the neighbouring ISPs pass this information on to their neighbours, and so on This process repeats until the information reaches the ISP in Japan
Cisco ISP Workshops
2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
34
3: How Does Routing Work?
This process is called Routing The mechanisms used are called Routing Protocols Routing and Routing Protocols ensures that the Internet can scale, that thousands of ISPs can provide connectivity to each other, giving us the Internet we see today
Cisco ISP Workshops
2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
35
4: How Does Routing Work?
ISP in Kenya doesnt actually tell his neighbouring ISPs the names of the customers
(network equipment does not understand names)
Instead, he has received an IP address block as a member of the Regional Internet Registry serving Kenya
His customers have received address space from this address block as part of their Internet service And he announces this address block to his neighbouring ISPs this is called announcing a route
Cisco ISP Workshops
2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
36
Routing Protocols
Routers use routing protocols to exchange routing information with each other
IGP is used to refer to the process running on routers inside an ISPs network EGP is used to refer to the process running between routers bordering directly connected ISP networks
Cisco ISP Workshops
2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
37
What Is an IGP?
Interior Gateway Protocol Within an Autonomous System Carries information about internal infrastructure prefixes Examples OSPF, ISIS, EIGRP
Cisco ISP Workshops
2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
38
Why Do We Need an IGP?
ISP backbone scaling
Hierarchy Limiting scope of failure Only used for ISPs infrastructure addresses, not customers or anything else Design goal is to minimise number of prefixes in IGP to aid scalability and rapid convergence
Cisco ISP Workshops
2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
39
What Is an EGP?
Exterior Gateway Protocol Used to convey routing information between Autonomous Systems De-coupled from the IGP Current EGP is BGP
Cisco ISP Workshops
2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
40
Why Do We Need an EGP?
Scaling to large network
Hierarchy Limit scope of failure
Define Administrative Boundary Policy
Control reachability of prefixes Merge separate organizations Connect multiple IGPs
Cisco ISP Workshops
2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
41
Interior versus Exterior Routing Protocols
Interior
automatic neighbour discovery generally trust your IGP routers prefixes go to all IGP routers binds routers in one AS together
Exterior
specifically configured peers connecting with outside networks set administrative boundaries binds ASs together
Cisco ISP Workshops
2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
42
Interior versus Exterior Routing Protocols
Interior
Carries ISP infrastructure addresses only ISPs aim to keep the IGP small for efficiency and scalability
Exterior
Carries customer prefixes Carries Internet prefixes EGPs are independent of ISP network topology
Cisco ISP Workshops
2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
43
Hierarchy of Routing Protocols
Other ISPs BGP4
BGP4 and OSPF/ISIS
BGP4 IXP
Cisco ISP Workshops 2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
Static/BGP4 Customers
44
FYI: IOS Default Administrative Distances
Route Source Default Distance 0 1 5 20 90 100 110 115 120 140 170 200 255
45
Connected Interface Static Route Enhanced IGRP Summary Route External BGP Internal Enhanced IGRP IGRP OSPF IS-IS RIP EGP External Enhanced IGRP Internal BGP Unknown
Cisco ISP Workshops 2006 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
Routing Basics
ISP/IXP Workshops
Session Number Presentation_ID
2005 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.
Cisco Confidential
46
