Tag: static routes

How it works?

If you have two routers / two Layer3 switches connected with two L3 links (two paths) you can route with two equal static routes towards the same prefix and the router will load balance traffic across both links.

The idea is to make two same static routes on the same router but with different next-hops. The question was: Which link or which route will be used? And if the traffic will be load balanced, which mechanism will be used to share the traffic across both of links.

 

ip route 10.0.0.0 255.0.0.0 192.168.10.2
ip route 10.0.0.0 255.0.0.0 192.168.11.2

There are different documents and books which are claiming that Administrative distance for static routes configured using exit interface is 1 and for the static route configured using next-hop IP address Administrative distance is 0.

R1(config)#ip route 20.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 10.10.2.1
R1(config)#ip route 20.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 fastEthernet 0/0

This is not true. Both of them are having AD value of 1. The confusion is coming from the info that directly connected interface has AD of 0, but static route outbound that interface is having the AD of 1.