RIP and Static Routing Overview

This section describes the Routing Information Protocol (RIP) and static routing commands available on the Sun Secure Application Switch.

IP routing description

The Sun Secure Application Switch supports static routing and the Routing Information Protocol for routing functions. Each vSwitch in the Sun Secure Application Switch represents a physical switch with its own routing domain, functional policies, and resources. The vRouters in a vSwitch are responsible for routing traffic to the network and between other vSwitches. You can configure the following routing functions for each vRouter:

Static routes - Manually defines a route for a specific destination network or host or a default route. The system uses a default route to forward data if it does not have the destination in its routing table. See the Sun Secure Application Switch for v3.0 - Configuration and Implementation Guide for details about configuring a default route.
Routing Information Protocol - Allows vRouters in vSwitches to exchange route information with other network routers.

RIP description

The Routing Information Protocol (RIP) is a distance vector protocol that routers use to exchange information about available routes in a local area network. Routers using RIP send periodic update messages to other routers in the network and when the network topology changes. These updates allow a router to learn the network topology and calculate the best path to a destination network. When a router receives routing information from another router, it updates its local routing table and sends a RIP update containing the revised routing table to its neighboring routers. By default, the Sun Secure Application Switch sends RIP updates to neighboring routers every 30 seconds. You can change the update interval using the rip globalSettings command. The router stores only the best path to a destination in its routing table. RIP uses a hop count to calculate the best path. The best path is the path that has the fewest number of hops (routers) that packets must traverse to reach the destination network. The maximum number of hops allowed in a path in a RIP network is 15 hops. The Sun Secure Application Switch supports RIP v1 and RIP v2.