What are the best practices for routing convergence and load balancing?

Routing convergence and load balancing are two important aspects of computer networking that affect the performance, reliability, and scalability of your network. In this article, you will learn what these concepts mean, why they matter, and how to apply some best practices to optimize your routing design and implementation.

1 Routing convergence

Routing convergence is the process of updating the routing tables of all routers in a network to reflect changes in the topology. To minimize disruption and packet loss, you should choose a routing protocol that supports fast convergence, such as EIGRP or OSPF. Applying route summarization and filtering can reduce the size and complexity of the routing tables and the frequency of updates. Additionally, reliable and redundant links and devices should be used to avoid frequent changes and failures in the network. Lastly, tuning parameters such as timers, hello intervals, and hold times can adjust the speed and frequency of routing updates and neighbor discovery.

Add your perspective

Leonardo Furtado

Senior Network Development Engineer | Hyperscale Networking | Network Automation
Report contribution
One challenge with OSPF is the increased convergence time in large networks: As the network size and complexity grow, OSPF's flooding mechanism for exchanging link-state information can cause longer convergence times, leading to delayed network recovery after a topology change. With EIGRP, the challenge is its limited support for large-scale networks, as it does not scale well in terms of memory and processing requirements as the network grows, which can lead to suboptimal routing decisions. Lastly, BGP has a slow convergence time due to its complex decision-making process and policy-based routing, as it requires the exchange of full routing tables, which can be resource-intensive and time-consuming, especially in large-scale networks.

Like

2 Load balancing

Load balancing is the distribution of traffic across multiple paths or devices to optimize the utilization of network resources and improve performance and availability. It can be done at different layers of the network, such as the data link layer, the network layer, or the application layer. To implement effective load balancing, you should use multiple equal-cost paths or weighted paths to balance traffic based on bandwidth, delay, or cost. Additionally, choose a load balancing algorithm that suits your network requirements, as well as a method compatible with your routing protocol. Finally, use a load balancing technique that minimizes the risk of out-of-order packets, such as source-based or destination-based hashing.

Add your perspective

3 Routing design

Routing design is the process of planning and designing the logical structure and configuration of your network to achieve desired goals and objectives. This includes choosing the appropriate routing protocols, addressing schemes, routing domains, and routing policies. When creating a routing design, you should take into account the size and scope of your network, such as the number of routers, subnets, hosts, and sites. Additionally, you should consider the topology and layout of your network, such as the physical connections, logical divisions, and hierarchical levels. Moreover, it's important to think about the performance and reliability of your network in terms of bandwidth, latency, throughput, and availability. Lastly, you should consider security and scalability aspects such as access control, encryption, authentication, and growth potential.

Add your perspective

4 Routing implementation

Routing implementation is the process of applying and executing your routing design to your network devices and systems, which involves configuring and verifying routing protocols, addresses, domains, and policies. To ensure a successful implementation, you should first prepare and document your routing design and implementation plan. It’s also important to test and validate your design in a lab environment or simulation tool before deploying it in production. Then, you should deploy and monitor your routing design in phases from the core layer to the access layer. Finally, troubleshoot and optimize your routing design using tools such as debug or logging to identify any potential issues or errors.

Add your perspective

Leonardo Furtado

Senior Network Development Engineer | Hyperscale Networking | Network Automation
Report contribution
Implementing routing protocols involves more than just configuring routing protocol processes: - Desired end-to-end connectivity. - Which prefixes need to be allowed and propagated, as this will determine your route filtering strategies, including route redistribution among different routing protocols. - How will the chosen routing protocol scale in your network? Routing protocol design (types and numbers of areas, etc.) and the expected or desired convergence times. - High-availability features should be taken into account, along with network security considerations. - Various traffic engineering strategies can be employed to maximize the experience across a wider variety of networking resources and address latency and congestion cases.

Like

5 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?

Add your perspective

What are the best practices for routing convergence and load balancing?

1

2

3

4

5

1 Routing convergence

2 Load balancing

3 Routing design

4 Routing implementation

5 Here’s what else to consider

Computer Networking

Rate this article

Thanks for your feedback

More articles on Computer Networking

More relevant reading

What are the best practices for routing convergence and load balancing?

1

2

3

4

5

1 Routing convergence

2 Load balancing

3 Routing design

4 Routing implementation

5 Here’s what else to consider

Computer Networking

Rate this article

Thanks for your feedback

Explore Other Skills