RFC 1863 (rfc1863) - Page 3 of 16

A BGP/IDRP Route Server alternative to a full mesh routing

RFC 1863                A BGP/IDRP Route Server             October 1995


2. Terms And Acronyms

   The following terms and acronyms are used in this paper:

  Routing Domain     -  a collection of routers with the same set of
                        routing policies.  For IPv4 it can be identified
                        with an Autonomous System Number, for IPv6
                        it can be identified with a Routing Domain
                        Identifier.

  Border Router (BR) -  a router that acquires external routes, i.e.
                        routes to internet points outside its routing
                        domain.

  Route Server (RS)  -  a process that collects routing information
                        from border routers and distributes this
                        information to 'client routers'.

  RS Client (RC)     -  a router than peers with an RS in order to
                        acquire routing information.  A server's client
                        can be a router or another route server.

  RS Cluster (RSC)   -  two or more of route servers that share the same
                        subset of clients.  A RS Cluster provides
                        redundancy of routing information to its
                        clients,  i.e. routing information is provided
                        to all RS Cluster clients as long as there is
                        at least one functional route server in the RS
                        Cluster.

  RCID             -    Cluster ID

3. RS Model

   In the proposed scheme a Route Server (RS) does not apply any
   selection criteria to the routes received from border routers for the
   purpose of distributing these routes to its clients.  All routes
   acquired from border routers or other Route Servers are relayed to
   the client border routers.

   There can be two classes of Route Servers: Route Servers that relay
   external routes between routers in a single routing domain and Route
   Servers that relay external routes between border routers in
   different routing domains.  The former are Intra-Domain Route Servers
   and the latter are Inter-Domain Route Servers.

   In the RS model proposed in this document there is no routing
   exchange between Intra-Domain Route Servers and Inter-Domain Route



Haskin                        Experimental