Routing Features
Powerful routing features support both Static and dynamically acquired routes (via RIP2). Each link in a multi-link network to be separately routed. ICMP re-direct support helps ensure the latest and shortest routing is always available.
Up to 20 static Logical and/or
Physical routes may be defined.
Up
to 20 independently routed static destinations or subnets are supported by
the Warp Range of products. Each entry defines a Logical Route comprising
of a Network Number, a Network mask, a Next Hop address, a connection
type, a route metric and ‘route properties. Route properties allow the
user to define routing characteristics at a Logical Route level such as
This clear separation of logical and physical routing allows multiple Logical
Routes each exhibiting different behaviors to be mapped to a single
Physical Route. An example of this would be where traffic for certain
purposes e.g. Internet access, was put through a NAT process but that
traffic for other purposes e.g. a Enterprise wide Extranet was not. Both
traffic types share the same physical connection but would undergo very
different internal treatments by the router.
Multiple Logical routes may be
combined on any Physical route.
The
clear separation of Logical and Physical routing used in the Warp range allows
multiple Logical Routes each exhibiting different behaviors (having different
route properties) to be mapped to a single Physical Route. An example of this
would be where traffic for certain destinations e.g. Internet default access, was put
through a NAT but that traffic for other destinations e.g. a Enterprise wide
Extranet was not. Both Logical Routes share the same Physical Route but undergo
very different forwarding treatments by the router.
Route properties apply to Logical
routes (e.g. NAT or Multicasting).
Each routing table entry defines a 'Logical Route'. 'Logical Routes' may be combined or aggregated onto a single Physical Route. Thus a single 'Physical Route' may carry many 'Logical traffic streams' whose routing requirements (incoming and/or outgoing) may be very different.
e.g. An ISDN, Wireless (or LAN) connection may carry 'Logical traffic streams' on which NAT is required. Sharing the same Physical Route
may be a set of destination addresses that constitute a VPN and which may be tunneled using the LockBox, L2TP or NAT. Yet other 'Logical traffic streams' may support Multicasting while the rest do not.
The ability to aggregate all such traffic enables ZYTRAX Routers to cope with any routing situation rather than 'classic' edge routing scenarios. All ZYTRAX Routers may act as a Remote or an Access Router with equal facility.
Unlimited number of dynamic routes may
be acquired (via RIP2).
There is no limit to the number of routes that can be acquired via RIP2. The route table, like all other tables in ZYTRAX Routers, is dynamically created from the available RAM buffer pool and can be as large as necessary to handle the network loads.
Multiple concurrent connections may be
supported.
Many,
so-called, routers have extreme difficulty in handling multiple concurrent
connections and being able to route traffic to any one of up to 20 differ
rent static destinations (and with RIP2 route acquisition – this figure
could be substantially higher). ZYTRAX Routers excel in this kind of routing
scenario e.g. using the router as a concentrator or ‘staging’ router
with one channel handling, say, Internet access while the other is
handling a branch office (which needs to communicate both with the local
LAN and with the Internet). This kind of routing scenario can save huge
dollars in Internet access costs while maintaining performance. Combined
with Bandwidth Management services, where the number of connections and
their destinations could vary on a minute-to-minute basis, the savings can
be more dramatic still.
Router Discovery protocol.
Required
to be compliant with RFC 1812. ZYTRAX Routers support the Router Discovery Protocol, a little used protocol, that
can be used by hosts to dynamically acquire the default router for any network.
All Routers 'advertise' their Primary IP as a Default Gateway as default (by configuration the Router may be defined to advertsie its IP as a non-Default Gateway).
ICMP redirect support.
ZYTRAX Routers both generate and use ICMP re-direct messages to dynamically improve their routing ability (and reduce network latency).
Internet Group Management Protocol
(IGMPv2) support for Multicast groups.
ZYTRAX Routers support IGMPv2 and may be optionally configured to support IGMPv1 multi-cast group membership acquisition.
Full CIDR routing support.
CIDR (or Classless Inter-Domain Routing) is a fancy way of saying that Net mask fields are not limited to the 'classic' Class A, Class B or Class C types but that any number of contiguous bit net masks may be used. ZYTRAX Routers fully support CIDR.
