Static routing

ndiayefrancisco2000

Hey guys, I'm learning about static routing in class this week. I just needed some help understanding the topic.

At what point would you consider a network too big for static routing? 10 different subnets? 20? 50? is there a router for every subnet? Do you think the larger networks have more changes to routing paths than smaller? If so, how could it affect routing standards being used at an organization?

Epostle

That is a very variable question. It's going to depend on how staffed the it department is for that particular thing.

Epostle

Changes should be made when either adding to or taking away from. Example being adding another department and having more clients. Or if you need to take away from departments. It's a very variable question with many ways to handle it, especially depending on what all they want to deal with.

ndiayefrancisco2000

I see what you mean, thanks for your thoughts

OctalDump

Routing protocols serve a few purposes. One is to reduce administrative effort - changes can be propagated through the network automatically. However, this needs to be balanced against the effort to implement and maintain the routing protocols. This is a function not just of the size of the network, but also its logical topology, and how frequent changes are. And frequency of change isn't entirely related to the size of the network, although broadly speaking, larger networks would have more change however it's more likely in larger networks that the changes would be planned, managed changes.

Another reason to use dynamic routing is to provide better resiliency in the case of outage so that alternative routes can be used. This requires a topology with some redundancy, but it means that it can easily route around downed links or load balance. When the downed link comes back, then it can make use of it again. All this can happen transparently without intervention. The flip side of this is that the actual route used between two hosts might not be easily predictable. Sometimes predictability is useful.

However, routing protocols have other downsides. Since they rely on communication between devices - in band - they have potential security issues. Routing protocols also require router resources like RAM and CPU, so you might need more expensive devices, or reduce use of other services on the router.

So these are the things you'd probably take into consideration.