Dynamic Routing

Philip Smith

E2 Workshop, AfNOG2006
Static and Dynamic Routing
■ Static Routing is a simplistic approach
■ Shortcomings
■ Cumbersome to configure
■ Cannot adapt to addition of new links or nodes
■ Cannot adapt to link or node failures
■ Cannot easily handle multiple paths to a
destination
■ Does not scale to large networks
■ Solution is to use Dynamic Routing
Desirable Characteristics of
Dynamic Routing
■ Automatically detect and adapt to topology
changes
■ Provide optimal routing
■ Scalability
■ Robustness
■ Simplicity
■ Rapid convergence
■ Some control of routing choices
■ E.g. which links we prefer to use
Convergence – why do I care?
■ Convergence is when all the routers have the
same routing information
■ When a network is not converged there is
network downtime
■ Packets don’t get to where they are supposed to
go
■ Black holes (packets “disappear”)
■ Routing Loops (packets go back and fore between the
same devices)
■ Occurs when there is a change in status of router
or the links
Interior Gateway Protocols
■ Four well known IGPs today
■ RIP
■ EIGRP
■ ISIS
■ OSPF
 RIP
■ Stands for “Routing Information Protocol”
■ Some call it “Rest In Peace” ☺
■ Lots of scaling problems
■ RIPv1 is classful, and officially obsolete
■ RIPv2 is classless
■ has improvements over RIPv1
■ is not widely used in the Internet industry
■ Only use is at the internet edge, between dial aggregation
devices which can only speak RIPv2 and the next layer of
the network
Why not use RIP?
■ RIP is a Distance Vector Algorithm
■ Listen to neighbouring routes
■ Install all routes in routing table
■ Lowest hop count wins
■ Advertise all routes in table
■ Very simple, very stupid
■ Only metric is hop count
■ Network is max 16 hops (not large enough)
■ Slow convergence (routing loops)
■ Poor robustness
 IGRP/EIGRP
■ “Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol”
■ Predecessor was IGRP which was classful
■ IGRP developed by Cisco in mid 1980s to overcome scalability
problems with RIP
■ Cisco proprietary routing protocol
■ Distance Vector Routing Protocol
■ Has very good metric control
■ Widely used in many enterprise networks and in some
ISP networks
■ Multiprotocol (supports more than IP)
■ Exhibits good scalability and rapid convergence
■ Supports unequal cost load balancing
 IS-IS
■ “Intermediate System to Intermediate System”
■ Selected in 1987 by ANSI as OSI intradomain
routing protocol (CLNP – connectionless
network protocol)
■ Based on work by DEC for DECnet/OSI (DECnet
Phase V)
■ Extensions for IP developed in 1988
■ NSFnet deployed, its IGP based on early ISIS-IP
draft
 IS-IS (cont)
■ Adopted as ISO proposed standard in 1989
■ Integrated ISIS supports IP and CLNP
■ Debate between benefits of ISIS and OSPF
■ Several ISPs chose ISIS over OSPF due to superior
Cisco implementation
■ 1994-date: deployed by several larger ISPs
■ Developments continuing in IETF in parallel
with OSPF
OSPF
■ Open Shortest Path First
■ “Open” means it is public domain
■ Uses “Shortest Path First” algorithm – sometimes
called “the Dijkstra algorithm”
■ IETF Working Group formed in 1988 to design
an IGP for IP
■ OSPF v1 published in 1989 – RFC1131
■ OSPF v2 published in 1991 – RFC1247
■ Developments continued through the 90s and
today
■ OSPFv3 includes extensions to support IPv6
Why use OSPF?
■ Dynamic IGP, Link State Protocol
■ IETF standard – RFC2328
■ many implementations
■ Encourages good network design
■ Areas naturally follow typical ISP network
layouts
■ Relatively easy to learn
■ Has fast convergence
■ Scales well
Link State Algorithm
■ Each router contains a database containing a
map of the whole topology
■ Links
■ Their state (including cost)
■ All routers have the same information
■ All routers calculate the best path to every
destination
■ Any link state changes are flooded across the
network
■ “Global spread of local knowledge”
 Routing versus Forwarding

■ Routing = building
maps and giving
directions
■ Forwarding = moving
packets between
interfaces according to
the “directions”
IP Routing – finding the path
■ Path is derived from information received
from the 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.)
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)
 Routing Tables Feed the
Forwarding Table
Forwarding Information Base (FIB)

Routing Information Base (RIB)

BGP 4 Routing Table

OSPF – Link State Database

Static Routes
Summary
■ Now know:
■ Difference between static routes, RIP and
OSPF
■ Difference between Routing and
Forwarding
■ A Dynamic Routing Protocol should be used
in any ISP network
■ Static routes don’t scale
■ RIP doesn’t scale (and is obsolete)