Steven – routingloop.net

Information Hiding in Routing Systems

One of the most effective methods to build stable and scalable routing designs is to summarize topology and reachability information in routing protocols. Summarization can help networks converge faster and limit the number of routers that need to perform route calculations when an event such as a link flap occurs. However, there are tradeoffs to

Static Routes, Exit Interfaces, Ethernets

9SeptemberStevenHome Lab, Routing

Ethernet Ethernet allows multiple hosts to share the same network segment. There are only 3 ways to deliver a frame to another computer over ethernet. You can send a broadcast and interrupt every host on the segment, send a multicast and hope that the intended receiver is listening, or send a unicast by placing the

Faster EIGRP Feasible Successor Failover

10AugustStevenHome Lab, Routing

The feasible successor is EIGRP predetermining an alternate next hop to reach a destination for fast failover. The feasible successor route is stored in the EIGRP topology table but is not installed in the RIB/FIB by default. The variance command can be used to promote the feasible successor to the routing table and traffic will

OSPF in Phase 1 DMVPN Networks

21JuneStevenENSLD, Home Lab, Routing

When designing hub and spoke networks, most architects will opt for distance or path vector routing protocols when given the choice. I don’t blame them, distance/path vector provides several benefits that work well in hub and spoke topologies. EIGRP based hub and spoke networks can scale to thousands of spokes without much work. Route summarization

OSPFv2 Link State Advertisements

14MayStevenHome Lab, Routing

Link State Advertisements (LSAs) are one of hardest things to understand while learning OSPF. I believe that having a basic understanding of the LSA types and being able to interpret them is crucial to understanding OSPF operation. LSAs are flooded to populate the Link State Database (LSDB) on routers participating in OSPF. The content of

Back to the Books

26AprilSteven1 CommentENSLD

Back in mid-February, I sat and passed Cisco’s 350-401 Enterprise Core exam. The final crunch before the exam wore me thin so I took a few days of rest and celebration. The current CCNP structure requires passing a core exam and 1 concentration exam within the same track. During my ENCOR studies I was torn

HSRP vs VRRP

8AprilStevenHome Lab

On the surface Cisco’s HSRP and the IETF’s VRRP appear to be the same thing. They both provide IP next hop redundancy by using an election process to determine which router should host a virtual IP address. The router that wins the election will host the VIP and respond to ARP requests for the VIP.

Does the Internet Still Matter?

8AprilStevenInternet

I know, it seems like a silly question to ask. Of course, the internet matters. Probably more than ever! I’d argue that for most people the only thing that actually matters is the ISP they’re connected to and the big content providers. It turns out that efficiently fetching content over long distances is a hard

It works! (kinda)

25MarchStevenHome Lab, Routing

We finally have spoke to spoke traffic working in our phase 1 DMVPN! After fixing the BGP third party next hop issue described in the last post we still had reachability issues between spokes. The spokes could reach the hub and the hub could reach the spokes just fine. Traffic transiting the hub to route

Home Lab DMVPN Lessons Learned

19MarchStevenHome Lab, Routing

My last post was about the home-to-home DMVPN we’ve been working on. The design intent was to build a phase 1 DMVPN so spoke to spoke traffic should use the hub as a transit node. It wasn’t until we tried to forward traffic from spoke to spoke that we realized we have issues. Spoke to

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A place for me to ramble about computer networking.

Author Archives: Steven