Syed Zaigum Qadri Ryerson#: 500380360 CN8810 Assignment 4 Routing Loops Prevention Techniques

A routing loop is a network problem that occurs when data packets are continually routed through the same routers over and over in an endless circle. A routing loop disallows packets from being properly routed due to the incorrect routing information circulating in the network. The symptom of such a routing loop is counting to infinity while routing updates on an unreachable network are incorrectly replaced by the older routing information. Normally Routing Loop is a problem associated with Distance Vector Protocols. Rooting loops occur because every router in an internetwork isnt updated simultaneously. Here is an example:

If network 10.4.0.0 fails, Router C detects the failure and stops routing packets to that network. At this point, Routers A and B do not know of the failure. Router As table still shows a valid path to 10.4.0.0 through Router B. If Router B sends out its normal update to A and C, Router C sees a valid path to 10.4.0.0 through Router B and updates its routing table to reflect a path to network 10.4.0.0 with a hop count of 2.

Now router C sends an update to Router B, which then updates Router A. Router A detects the modified distance vector to network 10.4.0.0 and recalculates its own distance vector to 10.4.0.0 as 4. With each update, the incorrect information continues to bounce between the routers. Without some mechanism to prevent this, the updates continue. This condition, called count to infinity, continuously loops packets around the network. Some distance vector routing algorithms have a Time-To-Live (TTL) value, but the routing loop problem can occur with this limit. You can avoid this by defining infinity as some maximum number. When you set this value, the routing loop continues until the metric exceeds the maximum allowed value. After the metric value exceeds the maximum, the network is unreachable. Three techniques have been developed in an attempt to reduce the chance of routing loops:

Split Horizon
A split horizon is a way that stops a route from being advertised back in the direction from which it came. Split Horizon mechanism states that if a neighbouring router sends a route to a router, the receiving router will not propagate this route back to the advertising router on the same interface.

Route Poisoning
Route poisoning is another way to avoid problems caused by inconsistent updates and stop network loops.

When network 10.4.0.0 goes down, Router C poisons its link to network 10.4.0.0 with an infinite metric (marked as unreachable). Router C is no longer susceptible to incorrect updates about network 10.4.0.0 coming from neighbouring routers that might claim to have a valid alternative path. When Router B receives a route poisoning from Router C, it sends an update called poison reverse back to Router C. This message ensures all routes on the segment have received the poisoned route information.

Hold-down Timer
Hold-down is a process in which a router, after receiving destination unreachable information from a neighbour router, will not accept new routing information from that router for a specified period of time, to prevent regular update messages from inappropriately reinstating a route that has gone bad. It is used due to the possibility that a device that has yet to be informed of a network failure may send an invalid regular update message (indicating that a route that has just gone down is still good) to a device that has just been notified of a network failure. In this case, the latter device now contains incorrect routing information. In other words, hold-down means: let the rumours calm down and wait for the truth. Once a route is marked as unreachable, the router starts the hold-down timer. If an update arrives from a different neighbouring router with a better metric than originally recorded for the network (before it became unreachable), the router removes the network from unreachable state, uses the new metric for the route, and stops the hold-down timer. If an update is received from other than the originating neighbour with an equal or lower metric, it is ignored. This allows more time for the network to stabilize before trying to converge. Hold-downs use triggered updates that reset the hold-down timer to alert the neighbour routers of a change in the internetwork. Unlike update messages from neighbour routers, triggered updates create a new routing update that is sent immediately to neighbour routers because a change was detected in the internetwork.

Triggered updates reset the hold-down timer when the hold-down timer expires or another update is received with a better metric.