Routing and Forwarding Tables

A major function of the JUNOS routing protocol process is to maintain the Routing Engine’s routing tables and from these tables determine the active routes to network destinations. The routing protocol process then installs these routes into the Routing Engine’s forwarding table. The JUNOS kernel then copies this forwarding table to the Packet Forwarding Engine.

The routing protocol process maintains multiple routing tables. By default, it maintains the following three routing tables. You can configure additional routing tables to suit your requirements.

• Unicast routing table—Stores routing information for all unicast routing protocols running on the router. BGP, IS-IS, OSPF, and RIP all store their routing information in this routing table. You can configure additional routes, such as static routes, to be included in this routing table. BGP, IS-IS, OSPF, and RIP use the routes in this routing table when advertising routing information to their neighbors.
• Multicast routing table (cache)—Stores routing information for all the running multicast protocols. DVMRP and PIM both store their routing information in this routing table, and you can configure additional routes to be included in this routing table.
• MPLS routing table—Stores MPLS path and label information.

With each routing table, the routing protocol process uses the collected routing information to determine active routes to network destinations.

For unicast routes, the routing protocol process determines active routes by choosing the most preferred route, which is the route with the lowest preference value. By default, the route’s preference value is simply a function of how the routing protocol process learned about the route. You can modify the default preference value using routing policy and with software configuration parameters.

For multicast traffic, the routing protocol process determines active routes based on traffic flow and other parameters specified by the multicast routing protocol algorithms. The routing protocol process then installs one or more active routes to each network destination into the Routing Engine’s forwarding table.

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