>thanks for the good feedback from the list and madman, chuck, howard, and >steve. I admit the static routes work efficiently, and they do the load >balancing as required. It just seems a bit uncool to be all static , that's >all.
Seriously, Jason, my experience in building lots of big networks says proper static routes (with all the bells and whistles such as different administrative distances, load balancing, and aggregation) are very cool. Relatively early in my Cisco routing experience, I was chatting with Tony Li, who was then the lead routing code designer for Cisco. He made the idle comment that he judged a good network design as one that had more, not less, static routes -- and you're talking here about the coauthor of the BGP standard. I particularly remember one large enterprise redesign where I was the architectural consultant. They had 2500 routers, mostly talking IGRP but a few from a non-Cisco vendor speaking RIP or OSPF. The overall goal was to move to OSPF. On detailed investigation, only 400 of the 2500 routers had any real alternative connectivity, where dynamic routing would have helped. The rest only had a single link to a distribution router, or perhaps a single dedicated link with a dial backup. Static/default serves just fine in those cases. One of the things that makes the use of statics easier is to remember that when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything tends to look like a nail. If one only looks at the routers proper as the networking tools, dynamic routing tends to look more attractive. But when you consider that you need to do IP address assignment, you are going to have at least a spreadsheet somewhere. It's not hard to have that assignment process automatically generate your static routes and DNS commands. I have several presentations on this at www.nanog.org and www.arin.net, as well as in my books. >If we go any direction it will probably be with eigrp, I like the idea >of the WAN update controls inherent when forced to carrying IPX/SPX to some >sites from the core. i could have done without the archive crack from >patrick. ;-) > > > >jason > > > > > >-----Original Message----- >From: Chuck Larrieu [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] >Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2002 05:25 PM >To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >Subject: Re: How would you design a Network ? [7:32067] > > > > > > >why do you think you need to change? seriously? what would dynamic routing > >give you that you don't have now - in terms of stability and the like? > > > >it might seem an odd thing to say, but I believe that dynamic routing in > >small environments, and maybe even in some larger environments, is over > >rated, no matter whose routers or what routing protocols you use. > > > >BTW, I am personally acquainted with a portion of the network of a very > >large technology company that consists entirely of static routes. Over 3000 > >of them. They had a particular good reason for doing it this way. But my > >point is that there are considerations other than "because you can" or > >"because you want to" > > > >Chuck > > > > > >""Bullock, Jason"" wrote in message > >[EMAIL PROTECTED]">news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]... > >> Listers. > >> > >> I would like to make some routing changes to a mostly static routing > >> environment. Currently everything is either routed via default gateway, > >or > >> static route statements. > >> > >> the environment consists of about 30 remote point to point WAN sites, with > >> most data traffic consisting of IP. We have several sites on dual T1's, > >and > >> all sites are terminating at a central corporate location. So a big star > >> network. The vendor of choice is cisco for routing and switching. > >> > >> Anyone see OSPF, EIGRP, BGP, IGRP, ISIS as the way to go? I would like > >to > >> make this network more dynamic, just having a hard time justifying the > >move. > >> > >> All thoughts appreciated! > >> > >> thanks, > >> Jason Message Posted at: http://www.groupstudy.com/form/read.php?f=7&i=32174&t=32174 -------------------------------------------------- FAQ, list archives, and subscription info: http://www.groupstudy.com/list/cisco.html Report misconduct and Nondisclosure violations to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
