Policy Framework Overview

The JUNOS software provides a policy framework, which is a collection of JUNOS policies that allows you to control flows of routing information and packets. The policy framework is composed of the following policies:

• Routing policy—Allows you to control the routing information between the routing protocols and the routing tables and between the routing tables and the forwarding table
• Firewall filter policy—Allows you to control packets transiting the router to a network destination and packets destined for and sent by the router

  Note: The term firewall filter policy is used here to emphasize that a firewall filter is a policy and shares some fundamental similarities with a routing policy. However, when referring to a firewall filter policy in the rest of this manual, the term firewall filter is used.

This chapter discusses the following topics related to understanding the JUNOS policy framework:

• Router Flows Affected by Policies
• Policy Architecture
• Comparison of Routing Policies and Firewall Filters