Route Preferences Overview

For unicast routes, the Junos routing protocol process uses the information in its routing table, along with the properties set in the configuration file, to choose an active route for each destination. While the Junos OS might know of many routes to a destination, the active route is the preferred route to that destination and is the one that is installed in the forwarding table and used when actually routing packets.

The routing protocol process generally determines the active route by selecting the route with the lowest preference value. The preference value is an arbitrary value in the range from 0 through 4,294,967,295 (2³² – 1) that the software uses to rank routes received from different protocols, interfaces, or remote systems.

The preference value is used to select routes to destinations in external autonomous systems (ASs) or routing domains; it has no effect on the selection of routes within an AS (that is, within an interior gateway protocol [IGP]). Routes within an AS are selected by the IGP and are based on that protocol’s metric or cost value.

This section includes the following topics:

Alternate and Tiebreaker Preferences

The Junos OS provides support for alternate and tiebreaker preferences, and some of the routing protocols, including BGP and label switching, use these additional preferences. With these protocols, you can specify a primary route preference (by including the preference statement in the configuration), and a secondary preference that is used as a tiebreaker (by including the preference2 statement). You can also mark route preferences with additional route tiebreaker information by specifying a color and a tiebreaker color (by including the color and color2 statements in the configuration). For configuration instructions, see Configuring a Preference Value for Static Routes, Configuring a Preference Value for Aggregate Routes, and Configuring a Preference Value for Generated Routes.

The software uses a 4-byte value to represent the route preference value. When using the preference value to select an active route, the software first compares the primary route preference values, choosing the route with the lowest value. If there is a tie and a secondary preference has been configured, the software compares the secondary preference values, choosing the route with the lowest value. The secondary preference values must be included in a set for the preference values to be considered.

Multiple Active Routes

The IGPs compute equal-cost multipath next hops, and IBGP picks up these next hops. When there are multiple, equal-cost next hops associated with a route, the routing protocol process installs only one of the next hops in the forwarding path with each route, randomly selecting which next hop to install. For example, if there are 3 equal-cost paths to an exit routing device and 900 routes leaving through that routing device, each path ends up with about 300 routes pointing at it. This mechanism provides load distribution among the paths while maintaining packet ordering per destination.