Networking Basics Routing

Routing in IP Environments

An "internet" is a group of interconnected networks. The Internet, on the other hand, is the collection of networks that permits communication between most research institutions, universities, and many other organizations around the world. Routers within the Internet are organized hierarchically. Some routers are used to move information through one particular group of networks under the same administrative authority and control. (Such an entity is called an autonomous system.) Routers used for information exchange within autonomous systems are called interior routers, and they use a variety of interior gateway protocols (IGPs) to accomplish this end. Routers that move information between autonomous systems are called exterior routers; they use the Exterior Gateway Protocol (EGP) or Border Gateway Protocol (BGP).

Routing protocols used with IP are dynamic in nature. Dynamic routing requires the software in the routing devices to calculate routes. Dynamic routing algorithms adapt to changes in the network and automatically select the best routes. In contrast with dynamic routing, static routing calls for routes to be established by the network administrator. Static routes do not change until the network administrator changes them.

As we have seen, IP routing specifies that IP datagrams travel through an internetwork one router hop at a time. The entire route is not known at the outset of the journey. Instead, at each stop, the next router hop is determined by matching the destination address within the datagram with an entry in the current node's routing table. Each node's involvement in the routing process consists only of forwarding packets based on internal information. IP does not provide for error reporting back to the source when routing anomalies occur. This task is left to another Internet protocol: the Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP.)

ICMP performs a number of tasks within an IP internetwork. In addition to the principal reason for which it was created (reporting routing failures back to the source), ICMP provides a method for testing node reachability across an internet (the ICMP Echo and Reply messages), a method for increasing routing efficiency (the ICMP Redirect message), a method for informing sources that a datagram has exceeded its allocated time to exist within an internet (the ICMP Time Exceeded message), and other helpful messages. All in all, ICMP is an integral part of any IP implementation, particularly those that run in routers.

Interior Routing Protocols

Interior Routing Protocols or IGPs operate within autonomous systems. The following sections provide brief descriptions of several IGPs that are currently popular in TCP/IP networks.

RIP

A discussion of routing protocols within an IP environment must begin with the Routing Information Protocol (RIP). RIP was developed by Xerox Corporation in the early 1980s for use in Xerox Network Systems (XNS) networks. Today, many PC networks use routing protocols based on RIP.

RIP works well in small environments but has serious limitations when used in larger internetworks. For example, RIP limits the number of router hops between any two hosts in an internet to 16. RIP is also slow to converge, meaning that it takes a relatively long time for network changes to become known to all routers. Finally, RIP determines the best path through an internet by looking only at the number of hops between the two end nodes. This technique ignores differences in line speed, line utilization, and all other metrics, many of which can be important factors in choosing the best path between two nodes. For this reason, many companies with large internets are migrating away from RIP to more sophisticated routing protocols.

IGRP

With the creation of the Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (IGRP) in the early 1980s, Cisco Systems was the first company to solve the problems associated with using RIP to route datagrams between interior routers. IGRP determines the best path through an internet by examining the bandwidth and delay of the networks between routers. IGRP converges faster than RIP, thereby avoiding the routing loops caused by disagreement over the next routing hop to be taken. Further, IGRP does not share RIP's hop count limitation. As a result of these and other improvements over RIP, IGRP enabled many large, complex, topologically diverse internetworks to be deployed.

Cisco has recently enhanced IGRP to handle the increasingly large, mission-critical networks being designed today. This new version of IGRP is called Enhanced IGRP. Enhanced IGRP combines the ease of use of traditional distance vector routing protocols with the fast rerouting capabilities of the newer link state routing protocols.

Enhanced IGRP consumes significantly less bandwidth than IGRP because it is able to limit the exchange of routing information to include only the changed information. In addition, Enhanced IGRP is capable of handling AppleTalk and Novell IPX routing information, as well as IP routing information.

OSPF

OSPF was developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) as a replacement for RIP. OSPF is based on work started by John McQuillan in the late 1970s and continued by Radia Perlman and Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in the mid-1980s. Every major IP routing vendor supports OSPF.

OSPF is an intradomain, link state, hierarchical routing protocol. OSPF supports hierarchical routing within an autonomous system. Autonomous systems can be divided into routing areas. A routing area is typically a collection of one or more subnets that are closely related. All areas must connect to the backbone area.

OSPF provides fast rerouting and supports variable length subnet masks.

Integrated IS-IS

ISO 10589 (IS-IS) is an intradomain, link state, hierarchical routing protocol used as the DECnet Phase V routing algorithm. It is similar in many ways to OSPF. IS-IS can operate over a variety of subnetworks, including broadcast LANs, WANs, and point-to-point links.

Integrated IS-IS is an implementation of IS-IS for more than just OSI protocols. Today, Integrated IS-IS supports both OSI and IP protocols.

Like all integrated routing protocols, Integrated IS-IS calls for all routers to run a single routing algorithm. Link state advertisements sent by routers running Integrated IS-IS include all destinations running either IP or OSI network-layer protocols. Protocols such as ARP and ICMP for IP and End System-to-Intermediate System (ES-IS) for OSI must still be supported by routers running Integrated IS-IS.

Exterior Routing Protocols

EGPs provide routing between autonomous systems. The two most popular EGPs in the TCP/IP community are discussed in this section.

EGP

The first widespread exterior routing protocol was the Exterior Gateway Protocol. EGP provides dynamic connectivity but assumes that all autonomous systems are connected in a tree topology. This was true in the early Internet but is no longer true.

Although EGP is a dynamic routing protocol, it uses a very simple design. It does not use metrics and therefore cannot make true intelligent routing decisions. EGP routing updates contain network reachability information. In other words, they specify that certain networks are reachable through certain routers. Because of its limitations with regard to today's complex internetworks, EGP is being phased out in favor of routing protocols such as BGP.

BGP

BGP represents an attempt to address the most serious of EGP's problems. Like EGP, BGP is an interdomain routing protocol created for use in the Internet core routers. Unlike EGP, BGP was designed to prevent routing loops in arbitrary topologies and to allow policy-based route selection.

BGP was co-authored by a Cisco founder, and Cisco continues to be very involved in BGP development. The latest revision of BGP, BGP4, was designed to handle the scaling problems of the growing Internet.

Cisco's TCP/IP Implementation

In addition to IP and TCP, the Cisco TCP/IP implementation supports ARP, RARP, ICMP, Proxy ARP (in which the router acts as an ARP server on behalf of another device), Echo, Discard, and Probe (an address resolution protocol developed by Hewlett-Packard Company and used on IEEE 802.3 networks). Cisco routers also can be configured to use the Domain Name System (DNS) when host name-to-address mappings are needed.

IP hosts need to know how to reach a router. There are several ways in which this can be done:

• Adding a static route in the host pointing to a router
  

• Running RIP or some other IGP on the host
  

• Running the ICMP Router Discovery Protocol (IRDP) in the host
  

• Running Proxy ARP on the router.
  

Cisco routers support all of these methods.

Cisco provides many TCP/IP value-added features that enhance applications availability and reduce the total cost of internetwork ownership. The most important of these features are described in the following section.

Access Restrictions

Most networks have reasonably straightforward access requirements. To address these issues, Cisco implements access lists, a scheme that prevents certain packets from entering or leaving particular networks.

An access list is a sequential list of instructions to either permit or deny access through a router interface based on IP address or other criteria. For example, an access list could be created to deny access to a particular resource from all computers on one network segment but permit access from all other segments. Another access list could be used to permit TCP connections from any host on a local segment to any host in the Internet but to deny all connections from the Internet into the local net except for electronic mail connections to a particular designated mail host. Access lists are extremely flexible, powerful security measures and are available not only for IP, but for many other protocols supported by Cisco routers.

Other access restrictions are provided by the Department of Defense-specified security extensions to IP. Cisco supports both the Basic and the Extended security options as described in RFC 1108 of the IP Security Option (IPSO). Support of both access lists and the IPSO makes Cisco a good choice for networks where security is an issue.

Tunneling

Cisco's TCP/IP implementation includes several schemes that allow foreign protocols to be tunneled through an IP network. Tunneling allows network administrators to extend the size of AppleTalk and Novell IPX networks beyond the size that their native protocols can handle.

IP Multicast

The applications that use the TCP/IP protocol suite continue to evolve. The next set of applications will include those that use video and audio information. Cisco is actively involved with the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in defining standards that will enable network administrators to add audio and video applications to their existing networks. Cisco will support the Protocol Independent Multicast (PIM) standard. In addition, Cisco's implementation will provide bandwidth management, security and interoperability with the MBONE, a research multicast backbone that already exists today.

IP multicasting (the ability to send IP datagrams to multiple nodes in a logical group) is an important building block for applications such as video. Video teleconferencing, for example, requires the ability to send video information to multiple teleconference sites. If one IP multicast datagram containing video information can be sent to multiple teleconference sites, network bandwidth is saved and time synchronization is closer to optimal.

Suppressing Network Information

In some cases, it may be useful to suppress information about certain networks. Cisco routers provide an extensive set of configuration options that allow an administrator to tailor the exchange of routing information within a particular routing protocol. Both incoming and outgoing information can be controlled using a set of commands designed for this purpose. For example, networks can be excluded from routing advertisements, routing updates can be prevented from reaching certain networks, and other similar actions can be taken.

Administrative Distance

In large networks, some routers and routing protocols are more reliable sources of routing information than others. Cisco IP routing software permits the reliability of information sources to be quantified by the network administrator with the administrative distance metric. When administrative distance is specified, the router can select between sources of routing information based on the reliability of the source. For example, if a router uses both IGRP and RIP, one might set the administrative distances to reflect greater confidence in the IGRP information. The router would then use IGRP information when available. If the source of IGRP information failed, the router automatically would use RIP information as a backup until the IGRP source became available again.

Routing Protocol Redistribution

Translation between two environments using different routing protocols requires that routes generated by one protocol be redistributed into the second routing protocol environment. Route redistribution gives a company the ability to run different routing protocols in workgroups or areas where each is particularly effective. By not restricting customers to using only a single routing protocol, Cisco's route redistribution feature minimizes cost while maximizing technical advantage through diversity.

Cisco permits routing protocol redistribution between any of its supported routing protocols. Static route information can also be redistributed. Further, defaults can be assigned so that one routing protocol can use the same metric for all redistributed routes, thereby simplifying the routing redistribution mechanism.

Serverless Network Support

Cisco pioneered the mechanisms that allow network administrators to build serverless networks. Helper addresses, RARP, and BOOTP allow network administrators to place servers far away from the workstations that depend on them, thereby easing network design constraints.

Network Monitoring and Debugging

With today's complex, diverse network topologies, a router's ability to aid the monitoring and debugging process is critical. As the junction point for multiple segments, a router sees more of the complete network than most other devices. Many problems can be detected and/or solved using information that routinely passes through the router.

The Cisco IP routing implementation provides commands that display the following:

• The current state of the routing table, including the routing protocol that derived the route, the reliability of the source, the next IP address to send to, the router interface to use, whether the network is subnetted, whether the network in question is directly connected, and any routing metrics
  

• The current state of the active routing protocol process, including its update interval, metric weights (if applicable), active networks for which the routing process is functioning, and routing information sources
  

• The active accounting database, including the number of packets and bytes exchanged between particular sources and destinations
  

• The contents of the IP cache, including the destination IP address, the interface through which that destination is reached, the encapsulation method used, and the hardware address found at that destination
  

• IP-related interface parameters, including whether the interface and interface physical layer hardware are up, whether certain protocols (such as ICMP and Proxy ARP) are enabled, and the current security level
  

• IP-related protocol statistics, including the number of packets and number of errors received and sent by the following protocols: IP, TCP, User Datagram Protocol (UDP), EGP, IGRP, Enhanced IGRP, OSPF, IS-IS, ARP, and Probe
  

• Logging of all BGP, EGP, ICMP, IGRP, Enhanced IGRP, OSPF, IS-IS, RIP, TCP, and UDP transactions
  

• The number of intermediate hops taken as a packet traverses the network
  

• Reachability information between nodes