Understanding the Routing Engine
Purpose
Inspect the Routing Engine to ensure that key system processes are operating normally.
What Is a Routing Engine
The Routing Engine is a key component in the router. It is primarily responsible for the protocol intelligence of the router. Thus, it is responsible for creating a routing table, which consists of all routes learned by all protocols running on the router. The Routing Engine interprets the routing table, generates a subset of routes to be used for all forwarding purposes, and places them in the forwarding table. The Routing Engine also holds the microcode for the Packet Forwarding Engine.
The Routing Engine is responsible for user interaction functions, such as the command-line interface (CLI), Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) management, and craft interface interaction.
The Routing Engine consists of the following components:
- Intel Pentium compact Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) platform
- Nonrotating compact flash drive (RAM disk)
- Standard rotating hard drive
- Removable media drive
The JUNOS software resides on the compact flash drive, with an alternate copy residing on the system hard drive.