Understanding Route Preference Values (Administrative Distance)

The Junos OS routing protocol process assigns a default preference value (also known as an administrative distance) to each route that the routing table receives. The default value depends on the source of the route. The preference value is a value from 0 through 4,294,967,295 (2³² – 1), with a lower value indicating a more preferred route. Table 1 lists the default preference values.

In general, the narrower the scope of the statement, the higher precedence its preference value is given, but the smaller the set of routes it affects. To modify the default preference value for routes learned by routing protocols, you generally apply routing policy when configuring the individual routing protocols. You also can modify some preferences with other configuration statements, which are indicated in the table.