Routing Basics

Campus Network Design & Operations Workshop

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Last updated 25th October 2022

 Routing Concepts
• Routers
• Routing
• Forwarding
• Some definitions
• Routing Protocols
 What is a Router?

• A router is a layer 3 device

• Used for interconnecting networks at layer 3
• A router generally has at least two interfaces
– With VLANs a router can have only one physical interface (known as
“router on a stick”)
• A router looks at the destination address in the IP packet, and
decides how to forward it
 The Forwarding Table
• Each router/host has a forwarding table, indicating the path or the
next hop for a given destination host or a network
• The router/host tries to match the destination address of a packet
against entries in the forwarding table
• If there is a match, the router forwards it to the corresponding
gateway router or directly to the destination host
• Default route is taken if no other entry matches the destination
address
 The Forwarding Table
Destination Next-Hop Interface
10.40.0.0/16 192.248.40.60 Ethernet0
192.248.0.140/30 Directly connected Serial1
192.248.40.0/26 Directly connected Ethernet0
192.248.0.0/17 192.248.0.141 Serial1
203.94.73.202/32 192.248.40.3 Ethernet0
203.115.6.132/30 Directly connected Serial0
Default 203.115.6.133 Serial0

Typical forwarding table on a simple edge router

 IP Routing – finding the path
• Forwarding table entry (the path) is created by the administrator
(static) or received from a routing protocol (dynamic)
• More than one routing protocol may run on a router
– Each routing protocol builds its own routing table (Local RIB)
• Several alternative paths may exist
– Best path selected for the router’s Global routing table (RIB)
• 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 route lookup
• Based on destination IP address
• “longest match” routing
– More specific prefix preferred over less specific prefix
– Example: packet with destination of 172.16.1.1 is sent to the router
announcing 172.16.1.0/24 rather than the router announcing
172.16.0.0/16.
 IP route lookup
• Based on destination IP address

172.16.0.0/16
Packet: Destination R3 announced
IP address: 172.16.1.1 from here

R1 R2

R2’s routing table R4

Destination  NextHop 172.16.1.0/24
172.16.0.0/16  R3 announced from
172.16.1.0/24  R4 here
172.18.0.0/16  R5
172.19.0.0/16  R6
……
 IP route lookup:
Longest match routing
• Based on destination IP address

172.16.0.0/16
Packet: Destination R3 announced
IP address: 172.16.1.1 from here

R1 R2
R2’s IP routing table
R4
172.16.0.0/16  R3 172.16.1.1
172.16.1.0/24
172.16.1.0/24  R4 exists inside
172.16.0.0/16 announced from
172.18.0.0/16  R5 here
172.19.0.0/16  R6
…… Match!
 IP route lookup:
Longest match routing
• Based on destination IP address

172.16.0.0/16
Packet: Destination R3 announced
IP address: 172.16.1.1 from here

R1 R2
R2’s IP routing table
R4
172.16.0.0/16  R3 172.16.1.1
172.16.1.0/24
172.16.1.0/24  R4 exists inside
172.16.1.0/24 announced from
172.18.0.0/16  R5 here
172.19.0.0/16  R6
…… Match as well!
 IP route lookup:
Longest match routing
• Based on destination IP address

172.16.0.0/16
Packet: Destination R3 announced
IP address: 172.16.1.1 from here

R1 R2
R2’s IP routing table
R4
172.16.0.0/16  R3 172.16.1.0/24
172.16.1.0/24  R4 172.16.1.1
does not exist inside announced from
172.18.0.0/16  R5 here
172.18.0.0/16
172.19.0.0/16  R6
…… Does not match!
 IP route lookup:
Longest match routing
• Based on destination IP address

172.16.0.0/16
Packet: Destination R3 announced
IP address: 172.16.1.1 from here

R1 R2
R2’s IP routing table
R4
172.16.0.0/16  R3 172.16.1.0/24
172.16.1.0/24  R4 announced from
172.18.0.0/16  R5 172.16.1.1
here
172.19.0.0/16  R6 does not exist inside
…… 172.19.0.0/16 Does not match!
 IP route lookup:
Longest match routing
• Based on destination IP address

172.16.0.0/16
Packet: Destination R3 announced
IP address: 172.16.1.1 from here

R1 R2
R2’s IP routing table
R4
172.16.0.0/16  R3 172.16.1.0/24
172.16.1.0/24  R4 Longest match, 24 bit prefix announced from
172.18.0.0/16  R5 here
172.19.0.0/16  R6
……
 Routing versus Forwarding

• Routing = building maps and

giving directions

• Forwarding = moving packets

between interfaces according
to the “directions”
 IP Forwarding
• Router decides 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)
• Forwarding is usually aided by special hardware
Routing Tables Feed the Forwarding Table

Routing Information Base (RIB)

BGP 4 Routing Table

Forwarding Information Base (FIB)

IS-IS – Local RIB

OSPF – Local RIB

Static Routes

Connected Routes
 The FIB
• FIB is the Forwarding Table
– It contains destinations, the interfaces and the next-hops to get to those
destinations
– It is built from the router’s Global RIB
– Used by the router to figure out where to send the packet
– Cisco IOS: show ip cef
 The Global RIB
• The Global RIB is the Routing Table
– Built from the routing tables/RIBs of the routing protocols and static routes
on the router
• Routing protocol priority varies per vendor – see addendum
– It contains all the known destinations and the next-hops used to get to
those destinations
– One destination can have lots of possible next-hops – only the best next-
hop goes into the Global RIB
– The Global RIB is used to build the FIB
– Cisco IOS:
show ip route
 Explicit versus Default Routing
• Default: Pointing all destinations to another device
– Simple, cheap (CPU, memory, bandwidth)
– No overhead
– Low granularity (metric games)
• Explicit: Every known destination (default free zone)
– Complex, expensive (CPU, memory, bandwidth)
– High overhead
– High granularity (every destination known)
• Hybrid: Default plus some destinations
– Minimise overhead
– Provide useful granularity
– Requires some filtering knowledge
 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
 Ingress Traffic
• How packets enter your network
• Ingress traffic depends on:
– What information you send and to whom
– Based on your addressing and ASes
– Based on others’ policy (what they accept from you and what they do with
it)
 Autonomous System (AS)

AS 100

• Collection of networks with same routing policy

• Single routing protocol
• Usually under single ownership, trust and administrative control
 Definition of terms
• Neighbors
– AS’s which directly exchange routing information
– Routers which exchange routing information
• Announce
– send routing information to a neighbor
• Accept
– receive and use routing information sent by a neighbor
• Originate
– insert routing information into external announcements (usually as a result of the IGP)
• Peers
– routers in neighboring AS’s or within one AS which exchange routing and policy
information
Routing flow and Packet flow

packet flow
accept announce
AS 1 announce
routing flow
accept AS 2
packet flow

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
 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
 Routing Protocols

We now know what routing means…

…but what do the routers get up to?
And why are we doing this anyway?
 1: How Does Routing Work?
• Internet is made up of the RENs and ISPs who connect to each
other’s networks
• How does an ISP in Kenya tell an ISP in Japan what end-users it
has?
• 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
 2: How Does Routing Work?
• ISP in Kenya could buy a direct connection to the ISP in Japan
– But this doesn’t scale – thousands of ISPs, would need thousands of
connections, and cost would be astronomical
• Instead, ISP in Kenya tells its neighboring ISPs what end-users it
has
– And the neighboring ISPs pass this information on to their neighbors, and
so on
– This process repeats until the information reaches the ISP in Japan
 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
– Thousands of ISPs can provide connectivity to each other
– We have the Internet we see today
 4: How Does Routing Work?
• ISP in Kenya doesn’t actually tell its neighboring ISPs the names
of the end-users
– (network equipment does not understand names)
• Instead, the ISP will have received an IP address block as a
member of the Regional Internet Registry serving Kenya
– The end-users will have received address space from this address block
as part of their “Internet service”
– And the ISP announces this address block to its neighboring ISPs – this is
called announcing a “route”
 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 a network
– EGP is used to refer to the process running between routers bordering
directly connected networks
 What Is an IGP?
• Interior Gateway Protocol
• Within an Autonomous System
• Carries information about internal infrastructure prefixes
• Two widely used IGPs:
– OSPF (Open Shortest Path First)
– IS-IS (Intermediate System to Intermediate System)
 Why Does Internet Need an IGP?
• Backbone scaling in RENs and ISPs
– Hierarchy
– Limiting scope of failure
– Only used for Operator’s infrastructure addresses, not end user
addresses or anything else
– Design goal is to minimise number of prefixes in IGP to aid scalability
and rapid convergence
• Scalable internal routing for end user networks
 What Is an EGP?
• Exterior Gateway Protocol
• Used to convey routing information between Autonomous
Systems
• De-coupled from the IGP
• The only EGP is Border Gateway Protocol (BGP)
 Why Does Internet need an EGP?
• Scaling to large network
– Hierarchy
– Limit scope of failure
–
•• Define Administrative Boundary
•• Policy
–
– Control reachability of prefixes
–
– Merge
Merge separate
separate organisations
organisations
–
– Connect
Connect multiple
multiple IGPs
IGPs
•• Application:
Application: RENs,
RENs, ISPs,
ISPs, Multihomed
Multihomed end-users
end-users
 Interior versus Exterior
Routing Protocols
• Interior • Exterior
– Automatic neighbor discovery – Specifically configured peers
– Generally trust your IGP – Connecting with outside
routers networks
– Prefixes go to all IGP routers – Set administrative boundaries
 Hierarchy of Routing Protocols

Other ISPs NREN/ISP

BGP

REN
BGP and
OSPF/IS-IS

BGP Static/BGP

Local Internet IXP End Users Campus

Questions?
 FYI: Default Administrative Distances
Route Source Cisco Juniper Huawei Dell Nokia Mikrotik
Connected Interface 0 0 0 0 0 0
Static Route 1 5 60 1 1 1
EIGRP Summary Route 5 N/A ? N/A N/A N/A
External BGP 20 170 255 20 170 20
Internal EIGRP Route 90 N/A ? N/A N/A N/A
IGRP 100 N/A ? N/A N/A N/A
OSPF 110 10 10 110 10 110
IS-IS 115 18 15 115 18 N/A
RIP 120 100 100 120 100 120
EGP 140 N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A
External EIGRP 170 N/A ? N/A N/A N/A
Internal BGP 200 170 255 200 130 200
Unknown 255 255 ? 255 39
?