Routing Basics

ISP/IXP Workshops

ISP Workshops

2009 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

Routing Concepts
IPv4 Routing Forwarding Some definitions Policy options Routing Protocols

ISP Workshops

2009 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

IPv4
Internet uses IPv4
addresses are 32 bits long range from [Link] to [Link] [Link] to [Link] and [Link] to [Link] have special uses

IPv4 address has a network portion and a host portion

ISP Workshops

2009 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

IPv4 address format

Address and subnet mask
written as [Link] [Link] or [Link]/24 mask represents the number of network bits in the 32 bit address the remaining bits are the host bits

ISP Workshops

2009 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

What does a router do?

?
ISP Workshops 2009 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

ISP Workshops

2009 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

Routing versus Forwarding

Routing = building maps and giving directions Forwarding = moving packets between interfaces according to the directions

ISP Workshops

2009 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.)

ISP Workshops

2009 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 [Link]/32 is sent to the router announcing 10.1/16 rather than the router announcing 10/8.

ISP Workshops

2009 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

IP route lookup
Based on destination IP address
R3 Packet: Destination IP address: [Link] 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

ISP Workshops

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IP route lookup: Longest match routing

Based on destination IP address
R3 Packet: Destination IP address: [Link] 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

[Link] && FF.0.0.0 vs. Match! [Link] && 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: [Link] 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 [Link] && [Link].0.0 Match as well! vs. [Link] && [Link].0.0

R2s IP routing table

ISP Workshops 2009 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

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IP route lookup: Longest match routing

Based on destination IP address
R3 Packet: Destination IP address: [Link] 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

[Link] && FF.0.0.0 Does not match! vs. [Link] && FF.0.0.0

R2s IP routing table

ISP Workshops 2009 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

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IP route lookup: Longest match routing

Based on destination IP address
R3 Packet: Destination IP address: [Link] 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

[Link] && FF.0.0.0 vs. Does not match! [Link] && FF.0.0.0
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R2s IP routing table

ISP Workshops 2009 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

IP route lookup: Longest match routing

Based on destination IP address
R3 Packet: Destination IP address: [Link] 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

ISP Workshops

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Routing Tables Feed the Forwarding Table

Forwarding Information Base (FIB)

Routing Information Base (RIB)

BGP 4 Routing Table

OSPF Link State Database

Static Routes

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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

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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

ISP Workshops

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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

ISP Workshops

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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)

ISP Workshops

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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
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Routing flow and packet flow

packet flow accept announce

AS 1

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

ISP Workshops

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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

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Routing Flow/Packet Flow: With multiple ASes

AS 1 N1 AS16 AS 8 N16

AS 34

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 AS16 AS 8 N16

AS 34

As multiple paths between sites are implemented it is easy to see how policies can become quite complex.

ISP Workshops

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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

ISP Workshops

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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
ISP Workshops 2009 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Routing Policy Limitations

red

red

Internet
AS22

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
ISP Workshops 2009 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Routing Policy Issues

280000 prefixes (not realistic to set policy on all of them individually) 30500 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

ISP Workshops

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Routing Protocols

We now know what routing means but what do the routers get up to? And why are we doing this anyway?

ISP Workshops

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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

ISP Workshops

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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

ISP Workshops

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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

ISP Workshops

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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

ISP Workshops

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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

ISP Workshops

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What Is an IGP?
Interior Gateway Protocol Within an Autonomous System Carries information about internal infrastructure prefixes Examples OSPF, ISIS, EIGRP

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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

ISP Workshops

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What Is an EGP?
Exterior Gateway Protocol Used to convey routing information between Autonomous Systems De-coupled from the IGP Current EGP is BGP

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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

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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

ISP Workshops

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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

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Hierarchy of Routing Protocols

Other ISPs BGP4

BGP4 and OSPF/ISIS

BGP4 IXP
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Static/BGP4 Customers

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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
ISP Workshops 2009 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

Routing Basics

ISP/IXP Workshops

ISP Workshops

2009 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

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