Ben Rockwood wrote:
The entire point of this thread is that I'm uncertain what I want; that is to
say, what I want is to know what my options are.
While running the Quagga daemons is an options for OSPF or IS-IS, I feel
nervous about running routing daemons on a host that isn't a router.
So let me re-phrase the question and see if the answers change:
Q) Are there methods of route dissemination available outside of routing
daemons (in.routed/Quagga), IRDP via in.rdisc, or DHCP.
The point is this... in a constantly changing/expanding network environment in
which the network administrators don't communicate with the systems
administrators, what are the available options outside of constantly running
into missing static routes.
To my knowledge directory services can provide network (netmask) maps, but not
routes.
I know of no directory type service for routes apart from the things
you've mentioned.
What would be the operational or technical difference between running a
routing protocol and being able (somehow) to distribute routes via NIS,
LDAP, or the like? How would that be less nerve-wracking than running a
protocol that's designed for the express purpose of distributing routes?
I'm not sure I understand what constraints you're working with.
There are non-standard extensions to PPPoE that can distribute routes.
They're not supported by OpenSolaris, nor by most other OSes. The
precursor to DHCP -- called BOOTP -- can also deliver default routes,
but, like DHCP, doesn't cope too well with dynamic change.
I'd still recommend the simplest course: set up your routers so that
they advertise summarized routes via RIP-2. It's simple, effective, and
interoperable. Failing that, you could buy into the DHCP scheme, which
does seem to be popular. (But which doesn't necessarily cope well with
networks that change often ... that's what routing protocols were
designed to do. DHCP revalidates its information only when the lease
gets old, which is typically a lengthy period of time. Plus, using DHCP
means that your DHCP servers somehow need to know the IP addresses of
the routers that are running at any point in time.)
For what it's worth, netmask distribution by way of NIS and other such
directory services doesn't really work. It has an obvious
chicken-and-egg design problem: you have to know the mask in order to
configure the interface in the first place before you can even talk to
the NIS server.
--
James Carlson 42.703N 71.076W <[email protected]>
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