Router

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This article is about a computer networking device. For the kind of rotating cutting tool, see wood router. For the type of network router found in many homes, see residential gateway. For the software used in electronic design automation, see routing (EDA).

Cisco 1800 Router

Nortel ERS 8600

Cisco 7600 Enterprise Routers
A router is a computer whose software and hardware are usually tailored to the tasks of routing and forwarding, generally containing a specialized operating system (e.g. Cisco's IOS or Juniper Networks JUNOS and JUNOSe or Extreme Networks XOS), RAM, NVRAM, flash memory, and one or more processors. High-end routers contain many processors and specialized Application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC) and do a great deal of parallel processing. Chassis based systems like the Nortel MERS-8600 or ERS-8600 routing switch, (pictured right) have multiple ASICs on every module and allow for a wide variety of LAN, MAN, METRO, and WAN port technologies or other connections that are customizable. However, with the proper software (such as XORP or Quagga), even commodity PCs can act as routers.
Routers connect two or more logical subnets, which do not necessarily map one-to-one to the physical interfaces of the router.[1] The term layer 3 switch often is used interchangeably with router, but switch is really a marketing term without a rigorous technical definition. In marketing usage, it is generally optimized for Ethernet LAN interfaces and may not have other physical interface types.
Routers operate in two different planes [2]:
Control Plane, in which the router learns the outgoing interface that is most appropriate for forwarding specific packets to specific destinations,
Forwarding Plane, which is responsible for the actual process of sending a packet received on a logical interface to an outbound logical interface.
Control Plane
Main article: Control Plane

Routers are like junctions whereas subnets are like streets and hosts like houses
Control Plane processing leads to the construction of what is variously called a routing table or routing information base (RIB). The RIB may be used by the Forwarding Plane to look up the outbound interface for a given packet, or, depending on the router implementation, the Control Plane may populate a separate Forwarding Information Base (FIB) with destination information. RIBs are optimized for efficient updating with control mechanisms such as routing protocols, while FIBs are optimized for the fastest possible lookup of the information needed to select the outbound interface.
The Control Plane constructs the routing table from knowledge of the up/down status of its local interfaces, from hard-coded static routes, and from exchanging routing protocol information with other routers. It is not compulsory for a router to use routing protocols to function, if for example it was configured solely with static routes. The routing table stores the best routes to certain network destinations, the "routing metrics" associated with those routes, and the path to the next hop router.
Routers do maintain state on the routes in the RIB/routing table, but this is quite distinct from not maintaining state on individual packets that have been forwarded.

Forwarding Plane (a.k.a. Data Plane)
Main article: Forwarding Plane
For the pure Internet Protocol (IP) forwarding function, router design tries to minimize the state information kept on individual packets. Once a packet is forwarded, the router should retain no more than statistical information about it. It is the sending and receiving endpoint that keeps information on such things as errored or missing packets.
Forwarding decisions can involve decisions at layers other than the IP internetwork layer or OSI layer 3. Again, the marketing term switch can be applied to devices that have these capabilities. A function that forwards based on data link layer, or OSI layer 2, information, is properly called a bridge. Marketing literature may call it a layer 2 switch, but a switch has no precise definition.
Among the most important forwarding decisions is deciding what to do when congestion occurs, i.e., packets arrive at the router at a rate higher than the router can process. Three policies commonly used in the Internet are Tail drop, Random early detection, and Weighted random early detection. Tail drop is the simplest and most easily implemented; the router simply drops packets once the length of the queue exceeds the size of the buffers in the router. Random early detection (RED) probabilistically drops datagrams early when the queue exceeds a configured size. Weighted random early detection requires a weighted average queue size to exceed the configured size, so that short bursts will not trigger random drops.

Types of routers

Cisco CRS-1 Carrier Routing System

Linksys BEFSR41 DSL Router
Routers may provide connectivity inside enterprises, between enterprises and the Internet, and inside Internet Service Providers (ISP). The largest routers (for example the Cisco CRS-1 or Juniper T1600) interconnect ISPs, are used inside ISPs, or may be used in very large enterprise networks. An example of an enterprise router would be the Cisco 7600 (pictured above). The smallest routers provide connectivity for small and home offices (for example the Linksys BEFSR41).

Routers for Internet connectivity and internal use
Routers intended for ISP and major enterprise connectivity will almost invariably exchange routing information with the Border Gateway Protocol. RFC 4098[3] defines several types of BGP-speaking routers:
Provider Edge Router: Placed at the edge of an ISP network, it speaks external BGP (eBGP) to a BGP speaker in another provider or large enterprise Autonomous System (AS).
Subscriber Edge Router: Located at the edge of the subscriber's network, it speaks eBGP to its provider's AS(s). It belongs to an end user (enterprise) organization.
Inter-provider Border Router: Interconnecting ISPs, this is a BGP speaking router that maintains BGP sessions with other BGP speaking routers in other providers' ASes.
Core router: A router that resides within the middle or backbone of the network rather than at its periphery.
Within an ISP: Internal to the provider's AS, such a router speaks internal BGP (iBGP) to that provider's edge routers, other intra-provider core routers, or the provider's inter-provider border routers.
"Internet backbone:" The Internet does not have a clearly identifiable backbone, as did its predecessors. See default-free zone (DFZ). Nevertheless, it is the major ISPs' routers that make up what many would consider the core. These ISPs operate all four types of the BGP-speaking routers described here. In ISP usage, a "core" router is internal to an ISP, and used to interconnect its edge and border routers. Core routers may also have specialized functions in virtual private networks based on a combination of BGP and Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS)[4].

Small Office Home Office (SOHO) connectivity
Main article: Residential gateway
Residential gateways (often called routers) are frequently used in homes to connect to a broadband service, such as IP over cable or DSL. A home router may allow connectivity to an enterprise via a secure Virtual Private Network.
While functionally similar to routers, residential gateways use network address translation instead of routing. Instead of connecting local computers to the remote network directly, a residential gateway must make local computers appear to be a single computer.

Enterprise Routers
All sizes of routers may be found inside enterprises. While the most powerful routers tend to be found in ISPs, academic and research facilities, as well as large businesses, may need large routers.
A three-layer model is in common use, not all of which need be present in smaller networks [5].

Access
Access routers, including SOHO, are located at customer sites such as branch offices that do not need hierarchical routing of their own. Typically, they are optimized for low cost.

Distribution
Distribution routers aggregate traffic from multiple access routers, either at the same site, or to collect the data streams from multiple sites to a major enterprise location. Distribution routers often are responsible for enforcing quality of service across a WAN, so they may have considerable memory, multiple WAN interfaces, and substantial processing intelligence.
They may also provide connectivity to groups of servers or to external networks. In the latter application, the router's functionality must be carefully considered as part of the overall security architecture. Separate from the router may be a Firewall or VPN concentrator, or the router may include these and other security functions.
When an enterprise is primarily on one campus, there may not be a distinct distribution tier, other than perhaps off-campus access. In such cases, the access routers, connected to LANs, interconnect via core routers.

Core
In enterprises, core router may provide a "collapsed backbone" interconnecting the distribution tier routers from multiple buildings of a campus, or large enterprise locations. They tend to be optimized for high bandwidth.
When an enterprise is widely distributed with no central location(s), the function of core routing may be subsumed by the WAN service to which the enterprise subscribes, and the distribution routers become the highest tier.

History
The very first device that had fundamentally the same functionality as a router does today, i.e a packet switch, was the Interface Message Processor (IMP); IMPs were the devices that made up the ARPANET, the first packet switching network. The idea for a router (although they were called "gateways" at the time) initially came about through an international group of computer networking researchers called the International Network Working Group (INWG). Set up in 1972 as an informal group to consider the technical issues involved in connecting different networks, later that year it became a subcommittee of the International Federation for Information Processing. [6]
These devices were different from most previous packet switches in two ways. First, they connected dissimilar kinds of networks, such as serial lines and local area networks. Second, they were connectionless devices, which had no role in assuring that traffic was delivered reliably, leaving that entirely to the hosts (although this particular idea had been previously pioneered in the CYCLADES network).
The idea was explored in more detail, with the intention to produce real prototype system, as part of two contemporaneous programs. One was the initial DARPA-initiated program, which created the TCP/IP architecture of today. [7] The other was a program at Xerox PARC to explore new networking technologies, which produced the PARC Universal Packet system, although due to corporate intellectual property concerns it received little attention outside Xerox until years later. [8]
The earliest Xerox routers came into operation sometime after early 1974. The first true IP router was developed by Virginia Strazisar at BBN, as part of that DARPA-initiated effort, during 1975-1976. By the end of 1976, three PDP-11-based routers were in service in the experimental prototype Internet. [9]
The first multiprotocol routers were independently created by staff researchers at MIT and Stanford in 1981; the Stanford router was done by William Yeager, and the MIT one by Noel Chiappa; both were also based on PDP-11s. [10] [11] [12] [13]
As virtually all networking now uses IP at the network layer, multiprotocol routers are largely obsolete, although they were important in the early stages of the growth of computer networking, when several protocols other than TCP/IP were in widespread use. Routers that handle both IPv4 and IPv6 arguably are multiprotocol, but in a far less variable sense than a router that processed AppleTalk, DECnet, IP, and Xerox protocols.
In the original era of routing (from the mid-1970s through the 1980s), general-purpose mini-computers served as routers. Although general-purpose computers can perform routing, modern high-speed routers are highly specialized computers, generally with extra hardware added to accelerate both common routing functions such as packet forwarding and specialised functions such as IPsec encryption.
Still, there is substantial use of Linux and Unix machines, running open source routing code, for routing research and selected other applications. While Cisco's operating system was independently designed, other major router operating systems, such as those from Juniper Networks and Extreme Networks, are extensively modified but still have Unix ancestry.
Other changes also improve reliability, such as redundant control processors with stateful failover, and using storage having no moving parts for program loading. As much reliability comes from operational techniques for running critical routers as it does to the router design itself. It is the best common practice, for example, to use redundant uninterruptible power supplies for all critical network elements, with generator backup for the batteries or flywheels of those power supplies.

External links
Internet Engineering Task Force, the Routing Area
Animation of routing process
Make your own powerful router with SmoothWall and old Computer

References
^ Requirements for IPv4 Routers,RFC 1812, F. Baker,June 1995
^ Requirements for Separation of IP Control and Forwarding,RFC 3654, H. Khosravi & T. Anderson,November 2003
^ Terminology for Benchmarking BGP Device Convergence in the Control Plane,RFC 4098, H. Berkowitz et al.,June 2005
^ BGP/MPLS VPNs,RFC 2547, E. Rosen and Y. Rekhter,April 2004
^ Oppenheimer, Priscilla (2004). Top-Down Network Design. Indianapolis: Cisco Press. ISBN 1587051524.
^ Davies, Shanks, Heart, Barker, Despres, Detwiler, and Riml, "Report of Subgroup 1 on Communication System", INWG Note #1.
^ Vinton Cerf, Robert Kahn, "A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication", IEEE Transactions on Communications, Volume 22, Issue 5, May 1974, pp. 637 - 648.
^ David Boggs, John Shoch, Edward Taft, Robert Metcalfe, "Pup: An Internetwork Architecture", IEEE Transactions on Communications, Volume 28, Issue 4, April 1980, pp. 612- 624.
^ Craig Partridge, S. Blumenthal, "Data networking at BBN"; IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Volume 28, Issue 1; January-March 2006.
^ Valley of the Nerds: Who Really Invented the Multiprotocol Router, and Why Should We Care?, Public Broadcasting Service, Accessed August 11, 2007.
^ Router Man, NetworkWorld, Accessed June 22, 2007.
^ David D. Clark, "M.I.T. Campus Network Implementation", CCNG-2, Campus Computer Network Group, M.I.T., Cambridge, 1982; pp. 26.
^ Pete Carey, "A Start-Up's True Tale: Often-told story of Cisco's launch leaves out the drama, intrigue", San Jose Mercury News, December 1, 2001.
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