Participating routers in an OSPF network have varying roles to play in ensuring that the processes which route the data around the network maintain a true and accurate picture of the network topology. The two primary roles in this structure are the Designated Router (DR) and the Backup Designated Router (BDR). Their roles, whilst primarily aimed at maintaining network function from a routing perspective, are equally focused on ensuring that network bandwidth used to accomplish this is used judiciously.

An Election

Consider a multi-access environment (such as LAN or MAN), where three or more routers are connected together. If all the routers in the OSPF network had to form adjacencies with every other OSPF router present, forming a fully meshed OSPF adjacency network, the resultant conceptualised routing mesh would be overly chatty flooding Link State Advertisements (LSAs) with each and every other OSPF router. As a direct result, router CPU load and network bandwidth would be consumed wastefully. OSPF is designed to be far more efficient in its use of these resources, and, in order to prevent this from happening, OSPF holds an election process to determine and fill roles named Designated Router (DR) and a Backup Designated Router (BDR) so that the workload of propagating routing information around the network is more effectively managed. Election for the DR and BDR is determined primarily on the Router Priority (which by default is 1) and the Router ID. If the value of the router interface priority is changed to 0, it prevents that router from becoming the DR or the BDR.

Router priority can be adjusted on Cisco routers on a per interface basis. The Router ID however is a 32-bit number that uniquely identifies the router in the Autonomous System. One algorithm for Router ID assignment is to choose the largest or smallest IP address assigned to the router. If a router's OSPF Router ID is changed, the router's OSPF software should be restarted before the new Router ID takes effect. Before restarting in order to change its Router ID, the router should flush its self-originated LSAs from the routing domain or they will persist for up to MaxAge minutes. Cisco uses a method that some other vendors choose to follow, but it is not a requirement. If you have a loopback interface, since that's the most stable interface on your router, that will be used. If there is no loopback interface, the highest IP address on the router is used. If there is more than one loopback then the highest of them is used. In many elections in OSPF, the higher RID wins. this is the logic for choosing higher over lower. It should be noted however that you can manually specify an RID that isn't even a valid ip address such as 224.1.1.1.

Drothers

The DR is the router which receives LSAs and other updates when there is a change in the inter-neighbor communications. These LSAs are sent out by the DROTHERS routers (all non-DR/BDR routers), and consequently, any further updates are propagated by the DR to the rest of the DROTHERS routers. The show ip ospf neighbor command, when executed, indicates the non-DR/BDR routers as DROTHERS. Every network segment in OSPF has a DR and a BDR.

The Process

What actually happens is that whenever there is a change in network routing status, instead of flooding each and every path with LSAs advertising new information about network topology, the update is only sent to the DR. The DR then takes on this job and floods the routers in its network segment with the update. If the DR fails or is not functioning, the BDR takes over. When this happens, the BDR replaces the existing DR as the new Designated Router, and a new BDR is elected.

A banner is a useful tool for sending a security message to selected visitors to the equipment. Cisco equipment uses four different banner types to provide different messages at different times and these types are exec process creation banner, incoming terminal line banner, login banner and message of the day banner.

Of these four types, message of the day is the most extensively used banner. Is message is seen by anybody connecting to the router whether they connect via Telnet, Aux port or Console port.



 

The image above shows the available types on the command line.

The most frequently seen type of banner is the Message of the day (MOTD) as mentioned above. When configuring this type of banner the following prompt is seen:

=================================================================================================

Router(config)#banner motd ?

LINE  c banner-text c, where 'c' is a delimiting character

Router(config)#banner motd #

Enter TEXT message.  End with the character '#'.

If you are not authorised to be using this router you must disconnect immediately.

#

Router(config)#^z

Router#

20:25:12: %SYS-5-CONFIG_I: Configured from console by console

Router#exit

Router con0 is now available

Press enter to get started.

If you are not authorised to be using this router you must disconnect immediately.

Router>

====================================================================================================

The most important part to understand is the delimiting character—this is the element that’s used to tell the router when the message is complete. Any character can be used as a delimiting character, but you can’t use the delimiting character in the message itself. Also, once the message is complete, press Enter, then the delimiting character, and then Enter again.

Below are some details of the other banners discussed:
Exec banner You can configure a line-activation (exec) banner to be displayed when an EXEC process (such as a line activation or incoming connection to a VTY line) is created. By
simply starting a user exec session through a console port, you’ll activate the exec banner.
Incoming banner You can configure a banner to be displayed on terminals connected to reverse Telnet lines. This banner is useful for providing instructions to users who use reverse Telnet.
Login banner You can configure a login banner to be displayed on all connected terminals. This banner is displayed after the MOTD banner but before the login prompts. The login banner can’t be disabled on a per-line basis, so to globally disable it, you’ve got to delete it with the no banner login command.

Here is an example of a login banner:
!
banner login ^C
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Cisco Router and Security Device Manager (SDM) is installed on this device.
This feature requires the one-time use of the username "cisco"
with the password "cisco". The default username and password have a privilege
level of 15.
Please change these publicly known initial credentials using SDM or the IOS
CLI.
Here are the Cisco IOS commands.
username <myuser> privilege 15 secret 0 <mypassword>
no username cisco
Replace <myuser> and <mypassword> with the username and password you want to
use.
For more information about SDM please follow the instructions in the QUICK
START GUIDE for your router or go to http://www.cisco.com/go/sdm

-----------------------------------------------------------------
^C
!
The above login banner should look pretty familiar—it’s the banner that Cisco has in its default configuration for its ISR routers. Again, this banner is displayed before the login
prompts but after the MOTD banner.

IP addressing is among the most important topics in any examination of TCP/IP. The IP address is a 32 bit binary identifier which, when configured correctly, enables each machine on an IP network to be uniquely identified. It is used to allow communication with any specific device on the network.

An IP address is defined in software and is configured dynamically as needed by software whether controlled by a human or a software process (as opposed to a MAC address which is a permanent, hard coded hardware address which cannot be easily changed). IP addressing was designed to allow media independent communication between any two hosts on the same, or different, IP networks.

Terminology

As a precursor to looking at IP Addressing in some detail, lets define some basic terminology.

Byte - A byte is a unit of binary information in that most commonly consists of eight bits. In the course of this post, the term Octet will also be used to represent one and the same thing.

IP Address - An IP address is a 32 bit binary number which represents, when assigned to a network device, its unique Network Layer (Layer 3) address. IP addresses are commonly described in Dotted Decimal notation for ease of human readability. Dotted Decimal notation is the conventional way of describing an IP address eg. 192.168.1.1 and is formed by separating the 32 bit IP address into 4 x 8-bit Octets, converting each Octet into a decimal number between 0 and 255 and separating each of these Octets with a dot. An IP Address is also frequently referred to as a Network Address and the terms can be used interchangeably however IP Address is by far the most common.

Broadcast Address - On any IP Network, the Broadcast Address is the address used to send to all hosts which are members of and connected to the IP Network.

IP Addressing

As mentioned previously, an IP address is made up of 32 binary bits. It is extremely important to always bear this fact in mind when working with IP addresses as failing to do so can significantly impair ones ability to fully understand and manipulate the IP addressing system as required.
IP addresses are commonly described in one of three ways -

1. Dotted Decimal (As described above)

1. Binary (As a 32 bit binary number)

1. Hexadecimal (Rarely used but can be seen when addresses are stored within programs or during packet analysis)

One important aspect of an IP address is that it is an hierarchical address. This has a number of advantages not least of which is the fact that it enables addresses to be aggregated together which greatly simplifies the mechanisms which are used to route traffic around the Internet.
In IPv4 there are 4.3 billion IP addresses available in theory and without this mechanism for route aggregation it would be necessary for Internet routers to know the location of each one of these connected devices.
The hierarchical system used by IPv4 is one which separates the IP address into two components, namely a network part and a host part.
In practice this "two component" system is further split down as the host part is frequently subdivided into even smaller subnetworks. In this post however we will limit or discussion to the "two component" system.

This term, "subnetwork", (often abbreviated to subnet) is one which is used frequently within the network engineering community to such an extent that it has become part of the jargon of the trade. This has only served to enhance its status as a term which has a great deal of complexity behind it but it is actually extremely simple. A subnetwork (subnet) is any subdivision of a larger network. It really is as simple as that.
The Two Component System / Network part and Host part

In order to make IP addresses hierarchical, a two component system has been created. This system splits the IP address into two parts known as The Network Part and The Host Part. This can be likened to a telephone number where (typically) the first 4 or 5 digits represent the town or city and the subsequent 6 or 7 digits represent the individual line.
The designers of this hierarchical addressing scheme created 5 classes of IP address by splitting up the full range of 4.3 billion addresses in a logical way. These 5 classes (or subdivisions) are known as Class A, B, C, D, and E networks.
For the purposes of this post we shall concern ourselves primarily with classes A, B and C however I shall briefly introduce each of the classes in the following section.
The 5 Network Classes
The image below depicts the 5 classes of IP Network as well as some of the basic features associated with each.



Class A - Class A networks were designed for use in networks which needed to accommodate a very large number of hosts.
As can be seen from the diagram, the first bit in a Class A address is always 0.
In each of network classes A, B and C, we can also see that the addresses are split into two parts, namely Network and Hosts.
These parts can be likened to the two parts of the telephone number described earlier.
The Network part is like the city code and the Host part is like the rest of the telephone number.
As you can see from the image, the division between the Network and Host part is set after the 8th bit. This means that we have 7 bits available to represent different Networks and 24 bits available to represent the individual hosts within each of the Class A networks.
It is clear therefore that, since the first bit must always be 0, the lowest network address available is 00000000.X.X.X (0 in decimal) and the highest network address available is 01111111.X.X.X (127 in decimal).
It would seem therefore that the range of addresses available to Class A networks is 0.X.X.X up to 127.X.X.X (Where X represents the Host part) but I shall demonstrate later that the 0 and 127 networks are reserved therefore the Class A address range runs from 1.X.X.X to 126.X.X.X in practice.

Class B - In Class B networks, the split between the network part and the host part happens after the 16th bit.
In any Class B network address the first two bits must always be set to 10. This leaves 14 bits to define the network number and allows addresses to range from 10000000.00000000.X.X up to 10111111.11111111.X.X .
These binary addresses equate in decimal to the first two Octets of Class B addresses ranging from 128.0.X.X up to 191.255.X.X
Class C - The pattern now emerging is that Class C addresses use the first 3 Octets to define the Network part of their addresses. Again, as with Class A and B networks some bits are permanently defined and in the case of Class C network addresses, the first 3 bits are always set to 110.
This means that we have 21 bits available to define the network part of Class C network addresses ranging (in binary) from 11000000.00000000.00000000.X up to 11011111.11111111.11111111.X which in decimal equates to 192.0.0.X up to 223.255.255.X

Class D - Class D (224-239) is reserved for Multicast Addressing and a post based explicitly on this addressing will be published ASAP and linked to from here. Class D addressing is beyond the scope of this post however if required please click this link for more detail. Class D Networks and IP Multicasting. .

Class E - Class E (240-255) is reserved for scientific experimentation and research and if any subsequent posts on this blog examine Class E networks, they will be linked to from here.