IPv6 Next Hop

Over the last two weeks I’ve been focusing on strengthening my knowledge of IPv6 and it got me thinking about usage of link local addresses as the next hop for routing. It became apparent that this difference from IPv4 makes it possible to have equal cost next hops via the same output interface and for

IPv4 Fragmentation

One of the attributes that helped IPv4 stand the test of time is the ability to slice and dice big datagrams into multiple smaller ones on the fly. This provides tremendous flexibility for different data links and their maximum packet size, reduced MTUs inside of tunnels, and the like. The process of chopping up IP

Exploring CEF

There are a few fundamental actions that a router must perform to take a packet coming in one interface and forward it out of another. The router must perform lookups to determine the exit interface and next hop information, it must rewrite the data link layer header and trailer for the egress link, and if

AS Boundary Links in IGP?

Lately I’ve been focusing on honing my BGP skills to prepare for the ENSLD exam. While this isn’t a configuration focused exam, I’ve been spending some lab time on it to reinforce design concepts. I built out a 29-node lab in Cisco modeling labs featuring eBGP, iBGP, route reflectors, BGP confederations, and eBGP third party

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

Faster EIGRP Feasible Successor Failover

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

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

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