Tag: ip route

What is static floating route

Static floating route is static route like any other but with added administrative distance in the configuration

R1(config)#ip route 172.16.10.0 255.255.255.0 10.10.10.2 200

static floating routeStatic Floating Routes are very interesting so I decided to give you a short description and an example.

A static floating route is the same as normal static route except that this kind of static route has administrative distance configured to some value higher than 1.

Remember that if we configure normal static route like this:

R1(config)#ip route 172.16.10.0 255.255.255.0 10.10.10.2

It will send all packets destined for 172.16.10.0/24 network to the neighbour with interface address 10.10.10.2

Of course, this static route will have administrative distance (AD) of 1 by default.

If we make the configuration like this:

R1(config)#ip route 172.16.10.0 255.255.255.0 Serial 0/0

In this case, the AD will be zero (0). Pretty cool right? There’s another article about that here.

In either case, this is normal because this is the way we configure routing on our router or if we use a dynamic routing protocol, this is then the way of overriding routing protocol decisions for some exceptions.

But what if we want to use a static route to make something completely opposite?

If we want to use static route only to be a backup route. Then we will need to give the precedence to the path learned by some IGP (Interior Gateway Protocol) like OSPF for example. We know that most paths (routes) learned by OSPF protocol have Administrative Distance of 110. In that case, the Administrative distance of a static route needs to be bigger than 110 if we don’t want to kick out the OSPF route from routing table.