Thursday, November 20, 2014
Saturday, November 15, 2014
OSPF Path Selection With Default Information Originate - How You Gonna Fix It ? - Part 1
I recently got a call from friend , he was stuck with an interesting OSPF Path Selection issue. Obviously the things didn't work the way he expected it to be :)
Now initially he was been given a Consulting task that involved Design & Configuration changes to meet a new network requirement.
Here is how the network initially looked like :
The customer had active-active WAN connections where these connections were also serving both WAN as well as Internet connectivity. Where as in LAN side they were using OSPF as shown in Topology above.
Now the new requirements given were:
> Brought Up New Internet Connection that will act as Primary Path to reach internet.
> In case the New Internet connection goes down, the old WAN cloud should still work as backup path to reach internet
> From R4's perspective, the path towards R2 should be primary path to reach internet (Through New Internet GW) while path through R3 should be backup path. I am not sure why this was a Hard Requirement but I guess the path from R4 to R3 was through RF link as shown below:
> Introduction of Static Routes, PBR, NAT for whatever reasons were not allowed to be used to solve this problem
Now my friend tried to solve this problem in an interesting way. He Introduced RIPv2 as new IGP between R5-R3-R2 to ensure he doesn't have to change anything into existing IGP since there was a large IGP domain connected to this setup.
Using RIPv2 he injected default route into RIB of R2 and R3. He had to change distance of RIPv2 originated default route so that it can get priority over BGP injected default route. Than he tried Injecting Default Routes into OSPF domain towards R4 using "Default Information Originate " option. Since the control over path selection was required here, During default route injection he used Metric Type as 1 with Higher metric given while injection route at R3 as shown below:
Obviously the solution didn't work as expected and here is why:
As you can on R4 we still have two routes instead of one in Routing Table.
Can you figure out what's the problem here and how we can fix it in easiest way ?
Or You Have any other better solution to fix it while meeting the given restrictions ?
I'll post my solution to the problem after 2 weeks.
To be on same page here is the Addressing I Used in while labbing this up:
Here is relevant configuration:
Now initially he was been given a Consulting task that involved Design & Configuration changes to meet a new network requirement.
Here is how the network initially looked like :
The customer had active-active WAN connections where these connections were also serving both WAN as well as Internet connectivity. Where as in LAN side they were using OSPF as shown in Topology above.
Now the new requirements given were:
> Brought Up New Internet Connection that will act as Primary Path to reach internet.
> In case the New Internet connection goes down, the old WAN cloud should still work as backup path to reach internet
> From R4's perspective, the path towards R2 should be primary path to reach internet (Through New Internet GW) while path through R3 should be backup path. I am not sure why this was a Hard Requirement but I guess the path from R4 to R3 was through RF link as shown below:
> Introduction of Static Routes, PBR, NAT for whatever reasons were not allowed to be used to solve this problem
Now my friend tried to solve this problem in an interesting way. He Introduced RIPv2 as new IGP between R5-R3-R2 to ensure he doesn't have to change anything into existing IGP since there was a large IGP domain connected to this setup.
Using RIPv2 he injected default route into RIB of R2 and R3. He had to change distance of RIPv2 originated default route so that it can get priority over BGP injected default route. Than he tried Injecting Default Routes into OSPF domain towards R4 using "Default Information Originate " option. Since the control over path selection was required here, During default route injection he used Metric Type as 1 with Higher metric given while injection route at R3 as shown below:
Obviously the solution didn't work as expected and here is why:
As you can on R4 we still have two routes instead of one in Routing Table.
Can you figure out what's the problem here and how we can fix it in easiest way ?
Or You Have any other better solution to fix it while meeting the given restrictions ?
I'll post my solution to the problem after 2 weeks.
To be on same page here is the Addressing I Used in while labbing this up:
Good Luck !!! :)
HTH...
Deepak Arora
Evil CCIE
Update For Ref: See comments section for further information.
HTH...
Deepak Arora
Evil CCIE
Monday, November 3, 2014
Does EIGRP Feasible Successor Always Work As Successor Fails ?
A recent discussion with friends brought this idea in my mind to write about this exiting subject. While I won't say all but many among them thought that it's always good to have EIGRP Feasible successors into Network while designing an EIGRP based network (Which of course is true ). And if EIGRP successor Route Ever fails, the EIGRP feasible successor will be installed quickly as it's a second best route in EIGRP Topology table based on feasibility condition, which will help minimizing convergence time.
And this is where most people start assuming that it's always going to be the case. Which of course is not true :)
Let's test this quickly based on following topology:
From R1's perspective it has three different paths to reach the destination - 5.5.5.5
Now let's review R1's routing table to first find which path is preferred.
As we can see, the middle path has been chosen as best path based on Dual Algorithm. Now let's next review R1's EIGRP topology table to figure out if we have feasible successor chosen at all and if So than which path.
As we can see, the path through R4 has been chosen as second best path (Feasible Successor). Since there is no other entry in Topology table showing path through R2, which means it's neither successor nor feasible successor and has failed feasibility condition.
Let's verify Feasible Distance (FD) and Reported Distance (RD) for path through R2 by shutting down the path through R3 and R4.
Now here is an interesting scenario:
> Path through R3 is the best path (Lowest Metric)
> Path through R4 is meeting feasibility condition (making it feasible successor). But overall cost to destination is worst if we compare all three paths metric.
> Path through R2 is actually second best path based on total metric but got out of the equation as it failed feasibility condition
Though we can see that topology doesn't include any potential link which can lead traffic back to original source while forwarding traffic towards destination 5.5.5.5 , but EIGRP fails to recognize this fact.
This is where we find this true that eventually EIGRP is an Advance Distance Vector protocol as it tries to avoid any possible looping with help of Dual Algorithm but is not always successful to find it's goal. But not as good as a Link State Routing protocol which would have the complete picture of the topology.
Now in this scenario what you think would happen if Successor Route fails ?
If we go by theory discussed earlier in the post, EIGRP feasible successor should take over. Right ?
But that would mean sub-optimal routing.
But don't worry. EIGRP is intelligent enough still and it finds Optimal Path here based on overall cost to destination and avoiding sub-optimal path.
To my surprise during this test two commands didn't work the way I expected. Which I must figure out sometime :)
Further Readings:
http://www.ciscopress.com/articles/article.asp?p=1763921&seqNum=5
http://books.google.co.in/books?id=XkM6vxsVJEsC&pg=PA78&lpg=PA78&dq=eigrp+convergence+with+feasible+successor&source=bl&ots=mvVF2sg2_K&sig=1jz3SMiK6TiRNnSdj1LKTIj8AHk&hl=en&sa=X&ei=EIxWVMriI8ekuQS-gIL4AQ&ved=0CD8Q6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=eigrp%20convergence%20with%20feasible%20successor&f=false
http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/ip/enhanced-interior-gateway-routing-protocol-eigrp/16406-eigrp-toc.html#feasibleandreported
http://packetlife.net/blog/2010/aug/9/eigrp-feasible-successor-routes/
http://rovingengineer.wordpress.com/2010/07/28/eigrp-feasible-successor-routes/
HTH...
Deepak Arora
Evil CCIE
And this is where most people start assuming that it's always going to be the case. Which of course is not true :)
Let's test this quickly based on following topology:
From R1's perspective it has three different paths to reach the destination - 5.5.5.5
Now let's review R1's routing table to first find which path is preferred.
As we can see, the middle path has been chosen as best path based on Dual Algorithm. Now let's next review R1's EIGRP topology table to figure out if we have feasible successor chosen at all and if So than which path.
Let's verify Feasible Distance (FD) and Reported Distance (RD) for path through R2 by shutting down the path through R3 and R4.
Now here is an interesting scenario:
> Path through R3 is the best path (Lowest Metric)
> Path through R4 is meeting feasibility condition (making it feasible successor). But overall cost to destination is worst if we compare all three paths metric.
> Path through R2 is actually second best path based on total metric but got out of the equation as it failed feasibility condition
Though we can see that topology doesn't include any potential link which can lead traffic back to original source while forwarding traffic towards destination 5.5.5.5 , but EIGRP fails to recognize this fact.
This is where we find this true that eventually EIGRP is an Advance Distance Vector protocol as it tries to avoid any possible looping with help of Dual Algorithm but is not always successful to find it's goal. But not as good as a Link State Routing protocol which would have the complete picture of the topology.
Now in this scenario what you think would happen if Successor Route fails ?
If we go by theory discussed earlier in the post, EIGRP feasible successor should take over. Right ?
But that would mean sub-optimal routing.
But don't worry. EIGRP is intelligent enough still and it finds Optimal Path here based on overall cost to destination and avoiding sub-optimal path.
To my surprise during this test two commands didn't work the way I expected. Which I must figure out sometime :)
Further Readings:
http://www.ciscopress.com/articles/article.asp?p=1763921&seqNum=5
http://books.google.co.in/books?id=XkM6vxsVJEsC&pg=PA78&lpg=PA78&dq=eigrp+convergence+with+feasible+successor&source=bl&ots=mvVF2sg2_K&sig=1jz3SMiK6TiRNnSdj1LKTIj8AHk&hl=en&sa=X&ei=EIxWVMriI8ekuQS-gIL4AQ&ved=0CD8Q6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=eigrp%20convergence%20with%20feasible%20successor&f=false
http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/ip/enhanced-interior-gateway-routing-protocol-eigrp/16406-eigrp-toc.html#feasibleandreported
http://packetlife.net/blog/2010/aug/9/eigrp-feasible-successor-routes/
http://rovingengineer.wordpress.com/2010/07/28/eigrp-feasible-successor-routes/
HTH...
Deepak Arora
Evil CCIE
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