Routing Protocols; Overview - HP 7102dl - ProCurve Secure Router Configuration Manual

IP Routing—Configuring RIP, OSPF, BGP, and PBR

Overview

15-6
Overview
This chapter describes how to configure routing protocols and policy based
routing (PBR). Before attempting to configure a routing protocol, you should
understand:
IP addressing, including how a subnet mask divides an IP address into a
network address and a host address
classful and classless IP networks
classless interdomain routing (CIDR) notation
variable length subnets
routing tables
the way a router uses a route to determine how to forward a packet
You can review these concepts in Chapter 11: Configuring Static Routes of
the Basic Management and Configuration Guide.

Routing Protocols

A routing table contains a route to every destination network that a router
knows how to reach. When you configure interfaces on the ProCurve Secure
Router, they are listed as directly connected interfaces in the routing table.
You can manually add routes to this table to specify destination networks.
(For more information, see Chapter 11: Configuring Static Routes of the
Basic Management and Configuration Guide.)
However, as a network becomes larger and more complicated, manually
configuring every route on every router becomes infeasible. Even when you
use default routes and hub routers to minimize the number of routes individual
routers must know, manually configuring routes for an expanding a network
can be time-consuming.
Entering static routes is also prone to errors: you can easily press the wrong
key and enter routes incorrectly.
Instead of configuring static routes, you can use dynamic routing protocols,
which enable routers to exchange routing information with other routers in
the network. Each router can then use this information to build its routing
table.