cpw%sneezy@LANL.GOV (C. Philip Wood) (09/05/89)
Resolution of Annex problem. A. First a few more facts: 1. Our network looks something like this: MILNET NSFNET | | | LANL | "LANL -> GW1--- ---GW2-....-GWn-----cisco backbone" | | | <- network X other lans lan with Annex on it and some local gateways. 2. We treat GW1 as our smartest gateway, its the default for the nodes on the LANL backbone. It knows how to get everywhere. The cisco shares what routes it knows about using RIP with those that are interested on the LANL backbone including GW1 by broadcasting as all good rippers do. Unfortunately, the cisco cannot send a default route to nodes on network X and all it knows about to nodes on the LANL backbone using RIP. 2. The software on our Annex gets bumbed when it receives too many routes. 3. The Annex people we have talked to did not know what to do. Although, I have since heard that they might be able to ship us some beta test software which would allow us to tell the 'routed' to not listen to all the routes being advertised by the cisco. Also, replys to my initial message indicate that Merit and NASA have a version of Annex software which can be tailored to not listen to massive RIP updates. B. What we did. Since the users of the Annex wanted to get work done, we solved the problem the same day I sent the original message by modifying in_proto.c on our Sun gateways and GW1 (4.3bsd VAX) to know about the HELLO protocol and built new kernels. These backbone gateways run 'gated' and are configured to do HELLO and RIP. The cisco now uses HELLO to relay what routes it knows about to our backbone nodes and sends a default route using RIP (metric 1) to network X. The Annex is happy. Everything is hunkydory. I learned how easy it is to configure 'gated' to do EGP, RIP and HELLO all at once. Thanks to all who offered suggestions. Phil P.S. If you were to look at the reachablity/routing information we share with the core or NSFnet you would(should!) only see (128.165 and 192.5.16).