CS 341

Routing Basics

IP Routing in a Larger
Network

Examples in the previous section, the router already had

both IP networks in its routing table because the networks
are directly connected to it. But what if we add another
router? Figure bellow shows three routers: Lab_A, Lab_B,
and Lab_C. Remember, by default, these routers only
know about networks that are directly connected to them.
Three routers connected via a WAN. Each router also has
an Ethernet network connected. The idea is that each
router must know about all five networks.

IP Routing in a Larger
Network

The first step is to configure each router correctly. Table

bellow shows the IP address scheme will use to configure
the network

IP Routing in a Larger
Network

IP Routing in a Larger
Network

Router configuration is really a pretty straightforward

process, since you just need to add IP addresses to your
interfaces and then perform a no shutdown on those
interfaces. It will get a tad more complex later on, but first
lets configure the IP addresses in the network.

Lab_A Configuration
To configure the Lab_A router, you just need to add an IP
address to interface FastEthernet 0/0 as well as the serial
0/0. Configuring the hostnames of each router will make
identification easier. And you can set the interface
descriptions, banner, and router passwords too.

IP Routing in a Larger
Network

To view the IP routing tables created on a Cisco router, after

configuration, use the command show ip route. The
command output is shown as follows.
Lab_A#sh ip route
Codes: C - connected, S - static, I - IGRP, R - RIP,
M - mobile, B BGP D - EIGRP, EX - EIGRP external, O OSPF, IA - OSPF inter area N1 - OSPF NSS external type
1, N2 - OSPF NSSA external type 2 E1 - OSPF external
type 1, E2 - OSPF external type 2, E EGP i - IS-IS,
L1 - IS-IS level-1, L2 - IS-IS level-2, * - candidate
default, U - per-user static route, o - ODR, P periodic downloaded static route, T - traffic
engineered route
Gateway of last resort is not set
C 192.168.10.0/24 is directly connected, FastEthernet0/0
C 192.168.20.0/24 is directly connected, Serial 0/0

IP Routing in a Larger
Network

Notice that only the configured, directly connected

networks are shown in the routing table. This means that
the router only knows how to get to networks 192.168.10.0
and 192.168.20.0. Did you notice the C? When you see it
there, it means that the network is directly connected.
The codes for each type of connection are listed at the top
of the show ip route command with their abbreviations.
Lab_B Configuration
To configure Lab_B, we have three interfaces to deal with:
FastEthernet 0/0, serial 1/0, and serial 1/1. Both serial
interfaces are DCE. What that means to us is that well
have to add the clock rate command to each interface.

IP Routing in a Larger
Network

With show ip route on Lab B you will Notice that router

Lab_B knows how to get to networks 192.168.20.0,
192.168.30.0, and 172.16.40.0. Router Lab_A and router
Lab_B can now communicate because theyre connected
on the same WAN.
Lab_C Configuration
The configuration of Lab_C is similar to the other two
routers (make sure we remember to add passwords,
interface descriptions, and a banner to the router
configuration

IP Routing in a Larger
Network

The output of the following show ip route command

displays the directly connected networks of 192.168.50.0
and 192.168.40.0, as seen here:

Lab_C#sh ip route

[output cut]
Gateway of last resort is not set
C 192.168.50.0/24 is directly connected, FastEthernet0/0
C 192.168.40.0/24 is directly connected, Serial0/0
Lab_C#

Routers Lab_A and Lab_B can communicate because theyre on the

same WAN network. And Lab_B and Lab_C can communicate too
because theyre connected with a WAN link. But router Lab_A cant
communicate with the Lab_C router because it does not know about
networks 192.168.40.0 and 192.168.50.0 yet

Configuring IP Routing in Our

Network

After all, its been correctly configured with IP addressing!

But how does a router send packets to remote networks
when it can only send packets by looking at the routing
table to find out how to get to the remote networks? Our
configured routers only have information about directly
connected networks in each routing table. And what
happens when a router receives a packet for a network that
isnt listed in the routing table? It doesnt send a broadcast
looking for the remote network, the router just discards
it.

Configuring IP Routing in Our

Network

There are several ways to configure the routing tables to

include all the networks in our little internetwork so that
packets will be forwarded. And whats best for one
network isnt necessarily whats best for another.
Understanding the different types of routing will really
help you come up with the best solution for your specific
environment and business requirements.
The different types of routing methodologies used like,
Static routing
Default routing
Dynamic routing

Configuring IP Routing in Our

Network

Let start off by implementing static routing on our network

because if you can implement static routing and make it
work, it means you have a solid understanding
of the internetwork. So lets get started.

Static Routing
Static routing occurs when you manually add routes in
each routers routing table. There are pros and cons to
static routing, but thats true for all routing processes

Static Routing

Static routing has the following benefits:

There is no overhead on the router CPU, which means you

could possibly buy a cheaper router than if you were using
dynamic routing.
There is no bandwidth usage between routers, which
means you could possibly save money on WAN links.
It adds security, because the administrator can choose to
allow routing access to certain networks only.

Static Routing

Static routing has the following disadvantages:

The administrator must really understand the internetwork

and how each router is connected in order to configure
routes correctly.
If a network is added to the internetwork, the dministrator
has to add a route to it on all routersby hand.
Its not feasible in large networks because maintaining it
would be a full-time job in itself.

Static Routing

heres the command syntax you use to add a static route to

a routing table:
ip route [destination_network] [mask] [next-hop_address
or exitinterface][administrative_distance] [permanent]
This list describes each command in the string:
ip route: The command used to create the static route.
destination_network: The network youre placing in the
routing table.
mask :The subnet mask being used on the network.

Static Routing

next-hop_address: The address of the next-hop router that

will receive the packet and forward it to the remote network.
This is a router interface thats on a directly connected
network. You must be able to ping the router interface
before you add the route. If you type in the wrong
next-hop address, or the interface to that router is down, the
static route will show up in the routers configuration, but
not in the routing table.
Exit interface: You can use it in place of the next-hop
address if you want, but its got to be on a point-to-point
link, such as a WAN. This command wont work on a LAN
such as Ethernet.

Static Routing

administrative_distance: By default, static routes have an

administrative distance of 1 (or even 0 if you use an exit
interface instead of a next-hop address). You can change
the default value by adding an administrative weight at the
end of the command.
Permanent: If the interface is shut down, or the router
cant communicate to the next-hop router, the route will
automatically be discarded from the routing table.
Choosing the permanent option keeps the entry in the
routing table no matter what happens.

Static Routing

look at a sample static route and see,what we can find out about it.
Router(config)#ip route 172.16.3.0 255.255.255.0 192.168.2.4
The ip route command tells us simply that it is a static route.
172.16.3.0 is the remote network we want to send packets to.
255.255.255.0 is the mask of the remote network.
192.168.2.4 is the next hop, or router, we will send packets to.
However, if the static route looked like this:
Router(config)#ip route 172.16.3.0 255.255.255.0 192.168.2.4 150
The 150 at the end changes the default administrative distance (AD)
of 1 to 150

Static Routing

To help you understand how static routes work, lets do

configuration on the internetwork shown previously example.
The Lab_A router is connected to networks 192.168.10.0 and
192.168.20.0. For the Lab_A router to be able to route to all
networks, the following networks have to be configured in its
routing table:
192.168.30.0
192.168.40.0
192.168.50.0

Static Routing

The following shows the configuration of static routes on

the Lab_A router and the routing table after the
configuration. For the Lab_A router to find the remote
networks, an entry is placed in the routing table describing
the network, the mask, and where to send the packets.
Notice that each static route sends the packets to
192.168.20.2, which is the Lab_A routers next hop.

Static Routing

Lab_A(config)#ip route 192.168.30.0 255.255.255.0

192.168.20.2
Lab_A(config)#ip route 192.168.40.0 255.255.255.0
192.168.20.2
Lab_A(config)#ip route 192.168.50.0 255.255.255.0
192.168.20.2

After the router is configured, you can type show runningconfig and show ip route to see the static routes:

Lab_A#sh ip route
[output cut]
S 192.168.50.0 [1/0] via 192.168.20.2
S 192.168.40.0 [1/0] via 192.168.20.2
S 192.168.30.0 [1/0] via 192.168.20.2
C 192.168.20.0 is directly connected, Serial 0/0
C 192.168.10.0 is directly connected, FastEthernet0/0

Static Routing

Remember that if the routes dont appear in the routing

table, its because the router cannot communicate with the
next-hop address you configured. You can use the
permanent parameter to keep the route in the routing table
even if the next-hop device cant be contacted.
The S in the routing table entries above means that the
network is a static entry. The [1/0] is the administrative
distance and metric, which Ill discuss below, to the remote
network. Here the next-hop interface is 0, indicating that
its directly connected. The Lab_A router now has all the
information it needs to communicate with the other
remote networks.

Static Routing

However, if the Lab_B and Lab_C routers are not

configured with all the same information, the packets will
be discarded at Lab_B and at Lab_C. We need to fix this
with static routes on the rest of routers.

Lab_B

Lab_B(config)#ip route 192.168.10.0 255.255.255.0 192.168.20.1

Lab_B(config)#ip route 192.168.50.0 255.255.255.0 192.168.40.2

Lab_C
Lab_C(config)#ip route 192.168.30.0 255.255.255.0 192.168.40.1
Lab_C(config)#ip route 192.168.20.0 255.255.255.0 192.16.40.1
Lab_C(config)#ip route 192.168.10.0 255.255.255.0 192.168.40.1

Static Routing

All the routers have the correct routing table, and all the
routers and hosts should be able to communicate without a
problem for now. But if you add even one more network or
another router to the internetwork, youll have to update all
routers routing tables by hand. This isnt a problem at all if
youve got a small network, but its way too time-consuming a
task if youre dealing with a large internetwork.

Verifying Your
Configuration

Once all the routers routing tables are configured, they

need to be verified. The best way to do this, besides using
the show ip route command, is with the Ping program.
By pinging from routers Lab_A and Lab_C, the whole
internetwork will be tested end-to-end. Eg
Lab_A#ping 192.168.50.1
Lab_C#ping 192.168.10.1
Since we can ping from end-to-end without a problem, our
static route configuration was a success

Default Routing

We use default routing to send packets with a remote destination

network not in the routing table to the next-hop router. You can
only use default routing on stub networks, those with only one exit
path out of the network.
In the internetworking example used in the previous section, the
only routers that are considered to be in a stub network are Lab_A
and Lab_C. If you tried to put a default route on router Lab_B,
packets wouldnt be forwarded to the correct networks because
they have more than one interface routing to other routers. And
even though router Lab_C has two connections, it doesnt have
another router on the 192.168.50.0 network that needs packets
sent to it. Lab_C will only send packets to 192.168.40.1, which is

Default Routing

the serial 0/0 interface of Lab_B.

Router Lab_A will only send packets to the 192.168.20.2
interface of Lab_A.
To configure a default route, you use wildcards in the
network address and mask locations of a static route. In
fact, you can just think of a default route as a static route
that uses wildcards instead of network and mask
information. In this section, youll create a default route on
the Lab_C router

Default Routing

Router Lab_C is directly connected to networks

192.168.40.0 and 192.168.50.0. The routing table needs to
know about networks 192.168.10.0, 192.168.20.0, and
192.168.30.0.
To configure the router to route to the other three
networks, I placed three static routes in the routing table.
By using a default route, you can just create one static
route entry instead. You must first delete the existing static
routes from the router and then add the default route.

Default Routing

Lab_C(config)#no ip route 192.168.10.0 255.255.255.0 192.168.40.1

Lab_C(config)#no ip route 192.168.20.0 255.255.255.0 192.168.40.1
Lab_C(config)#no ip route 192.168.30.0 255.255.255.0 192.168.40.1
Lab_C(config)#ip route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 192.168.40.1

If you look at the routing table now, youll see only the two
directly connected networks plus an S*, which indicates that
this entry is a candidate for a default route.

Lab_C#sh ip route
[output cut]
Gateway of last resort is 192.168.40.1 to network 0.0.0.0
C 192.168.50.0 is directly connected, FastEthernet0/0
C 192.168.40.0 is directly connected, Serial0/0
S* 0.0.0.0/0 [1/0] via 192.168.40.1

Default Routing

We could have completed the default route command

another way:
Lab_C(config)#ip route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 s0/0

This says that if you dont have an entry for a network in

the routing table, just forward it out serial 0/0. You can
choose the IP address of the next-hop router or the exit
interface, either way, it will work the same.
Notice also in the routing table that the gateway of last
resort is now set. Even so, theres one more command you
must be aware of when using default routes: the ip classless
command.

Default Routing

All Cisco routers are classful routers, meaning that they

expect a default subnet mask on each interface of the
router. When a router receives a packet for a destination
subnet thats not in the routing table, it will drop the packet
by default. If youre using default routing, you must use
the ip classless command because it is possible that no
remote subnets will be in the routing table.
If youre using default routing and this command isnt in
your configuration, you would need to add it if you had
subnetted networks on your routers.
Lab_C(config)#ip classless

Default Routing

Notice that its a global configuration mode command. The

interesting part of the ip classless command is that default
routing sometimes works without it, but sometimes
doesnt. To be on the safe side, you should always turn on
the ip classless command when you use default routing.
Theres another command you can use to configure a
gateway of last resort; the ip default-network command.
Example bellow shows a network that needs to have a
gateway of last resort statement configured. Here are three
solutions (all providing the same solution) for adding a
gateway of last resort on the gateway router to the ISP.

Default Routing

Gateway(config)#ip route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 217.124.6.1

Gateway(config)#ip route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 s0/0
Gateway(config)#ip default-network 217.124.6.0

Default Routing

All three of these commands would accomplish the goal of

setting the gateway of last resort, but there are some small
differences between them. First, the exit interface solution
would be used over the other two solutions because it has an
AD of 0. Also, the ip default-network command would
advertise the default network when you configure an IGP
on the router. This is so other routers in your internetwork
will receive this route as a default route automatically.
Example
If you have the routing table output as shown below, what
happens if the router receives a packet from 10.1.6.100
destined for host 10.1.8.5?

Default Routing

Corp#sh ip route
[output cut]
Gateway of last resort is 10.1.5.5 to network 0.0.0.0
R 10.1.3.0 [120/1] via 101.2.2, 00:00:00, Serial 0/0
C 10.1.2.0 is directly connected, Serial0/0
C 10.1.5.0 is directly connected, Serial0/1
C 10.1.6.0 is directly connected, Fastethernet0/0
R* 0.0.0.0/0 [120/0] via 10.1.5.5, 00:00:00 Serial 0/1

The default route is listed as R*, which means its a RIP-injected

route. This is because someone configured the ip defaultnetwork command on a remote router as well as configuring RIP,
causing RIP to advertise this route through the internetwork as a
default route. Since the destination address is 10.1.8.5, and there
is no route to network 10.1.8.0, the router would use the default
route and send the packet out serial 0/1.

Dynamic Routing

Dynamic routing is when protocols are used to find

networks and update routing tables on routers. this is easier
than using static or default routing, but itll cost you in
terms of router CPU processes and bandwidth on the
network links. A routing protocol defines the set of rules
used by a router when it communicates routing
information between neighbor routers.
There are two types of routing protocols used in
internetworks: interior gateway protocols (IGPs) and
exterior gateway protocols (EGPs).

IGPs are used to exchange routing information with

routers in the same autonomous system (AS). An AS is a
collection of networks under a common administrative
domain, which basically means that all routers sharing the
same routing table information are in the same AS.
EGPs are used to communicate between Ases.
Since routing protocols are so essential to dynamic
routing, lets have a brief of routing protocols before we get
into dynamic routing.

Routing Protocol Basics

Administrative Distances
The administrative distance (AD) is used to rate the
trustworthiness of routing information received on a router
from a neighbor router. An administrative distance is an
integer from 0 to 255, where 0 is the most trusted and 255
means no traffic will be passed via this route.
If a router receives two updates listing the same remote
network, the first thing the router checks is the AD. If one
of the advertised routes has a lower AD than the other, then
the route with the lowest AD will be placed in the routing
table.

If both advertised routes to the same network have the

same AD, then routing protocol metrics (such as hop count
or bandwidth of the lines) will be used to find the best path
to the remote network. The advertised route with the lowest
metric will be placed in the routing table. But if
both advertised routes have the same AD as well as the
same metrics, then the routing protocol will load-balance to
the remote network (which means that it sends packets
down each link).
Table bellow shows the default administrative distances
that a Cisco router uses to decide which route to take to a
remote network for different routing protocol

If a network is directly connected, the router will always

use the interface connected to the network. If an
administrator configures a static route, the router will
believe that route over any other learned routes. You can
change the administrative distance of static routes, but, by
default, they have an AD of 1.
If you have a static route, a RIP-advertised route, and an
IGRP-advertised route listing the same network, then by
default, the router will always use the static route unless
you change the AD of the static route.

Routing Protocols

There are three classes of routing protocols:

Distance vector The distance-vector protocols find the best
path to a remote network by judging distance. Each time a
packet goes through a router, thats called a hop. The route
with the least number of hops to the network is determined
to be the best route. The vector indicates the direction to
the remote network. Both RIP and IGRP are distancevector routing protocols.
They send the entire routing table to directly connected
neighbors.

Link state In link-state protocols, also called shortest-pathfirst protocols, the routers each create three separate tables.
One of these tables keeps track of directly attached
neighbors, one determines the topology of the entire
internetwork, and one is used as the routing table. Linkstate
routers know more about the internetwork than any
distance-vector routing protocol.
OSPF is an IP routing protocol that is completely link state.
Link state protocols send updates containing the state of
their own links to all other routers on the network
Hybrid Hybrid protocols use aspects of both distance vector
and link statefor example,EIGRP.

Distance-Vector
Routing Protocols

The distance-vector routing algorithm passes complete routing

table contents to neighboring routers, which then combine the
received routing table entries with their own routing tables to
complete the routers routing table. This is called routing by
rumor, because a router receiving an update from a neighbor
router believes the information about remote networks without
actually finding out for itself.
Its possible to have a network that has multiple links to the same
remote network, and if thats the case, the administrative distance
is checked first. If the AD is the same, the protocol
will have to use other metrics to determine the best path to use to
that remote network. RIP uses only hop count to determine the
best path to a network. If RIP finds more than one link to the

same remote network with the same hop count, it will

automatically perform a round-robin load balancing. RIP
can perform load balancing for up to six equal-cost links
(four by default). However, a problem with this type of
routing metric arises when the two links to a remote
network are different bandwidths but the same hop count
See the example bellow.

Since network 172.16.30.0 is a T1 link with a bandwidth of

1.544Mbps, and network 172.16.20.0 is a 56K link, youd
want the router to choose the T1 over the 56K link, right?
But because hop count is the only metric used with RIP
routing, the two links would be seen as being of equal cost.
This little snag is called pinhole congestion.
Its important to understand what a distance-vector routing
protocol does when it starts up. In Figure above, the four
routers start off with only their directly connected networks
in the routing table. After a distance-vector routing protocol
is started on each router, the routing tables

are updated with all route information gathered from

neighbor routers.
As shown in Figure above, each router has only the
directly connected networks in each routing table. Each
router sends its complete routing table out to each active
interface. The routing table of each router includes the
network number, exit interface, and hop count
to the network.

In Figure bellow, the routing tables are complete because

they include information about all the networks in the
internetwork. They are considered converged. When the
routers are converging, it is possible that no data will be
passed. Thats why fast convergence time is a serious plus.
In fact, thats one of the problems with RIPits slow
convergence time. The routing table in each router keeps
information regarding the remote network number,
the interface to which the router will send packets to reach
that network, and the hop count or
metric to the network.

The internetwork with

distance-vector routing

Converged routing tables

Routing Loops

Distance-vector routing protocols keep track of any changes to

the internetwork by broadcasting periodic routing updates out
all active interfaces. This broadcast includes the complete
routing table. This works just fine, but its expensive in terms of
CPU process and link bandwidth. And if a network outage
happens, real problems can occur. Plus, the slow convergence of
distance- vector routing protocols can result in inconsistent
routing tables and routing loops.
Routing loops can occur because every router isnt updated
simultaneously, or even close to it. Heres an examplelets say
that the interface to Network 5 in Figure bellow fails. All routers
know about Network 5 from Router E. Router A, in its tables,
has a path to Network 5 through Router B.

When Network 5 fails, Router E tells Router C. This causes

Router C to stop routing to Network 5 through Router E. But
Routers A, B, and D dont know about Network 5 yet, so they
keep sending out update information. Router C will eventually
send out its update and cause B to stop routing to Network 5, but
Routers A and D are still not updated. To them, it appears that
Network 5 is still available through Router B with a metric of 3.

The problem occurs when Router A sends out its regular

30-second Hello, Im still here; these are the links I know
about message, which includes the ability to reach
Network 5 and now Routers B and D receive the
wonderful news that Network 5 can be reached from
Router A, so Routers B and D then send out the
information that Network 5 is available. Any packet
destined for Network 5 will go to Router A, to Router B,
and then back to Router A. This is a routing loophow do
you stop it?