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Understanding Policy Based Routing

Policy based routing allows network administrators to implement routing policies that override normal routing procedures to selectively route packets based on factors like source address, protocol, or application. This provides a powerful and flexible tool to route traffic through specific paths as required by legal, contractual, or political constraints. It can be used for source-based transit provider selection, quality of service by setting ToS values, cost savings by routing different traffic over high-cost or low-cost links, and load sharing among multiple paths.

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Atik Israk Lemon
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16 views1 page

Understanding Policy Based Routing

Policy based routing allows network administrators to implement routing policies that override normal routing procedures to selectively route packets based on factors like source address, protocol, or application. This provides a powerful and flexible tool to route traffic through specific paths as required by legal, contractual, or political constraints. It can be used for source-based transit provider selection, quality of service by setting ToS values, cost savings by routing different traffic over high-cost or low-cost links, and load sharing among multiple paths.

Uploaded by

Atik Israk Lemon
Copyright
© All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

What is Policy Based Routing?

Routers normally forward packets to destination addresses based on information in their routing
tables. By using PBR, we can implement policies that selectively cause packets to take different
paths based on source address, protocol types, or application types. Therefore, PBR overrides the
router’s normal routing procedures. PBR also provides a mechanism to mark packets with different
types of service (ToS). PBR provides an extremely powerful, simple, and flexible tool to
implement solutions in cases where legal, contractual, or political constraints dictate that traffic be
routed through specific paths.
Benefits of Policy Based Routing:
1. Source-based transit provider selection: Internet service providers (ISPs) and other
organizations can use PBR to route traffic originating from different sets of users through
different Internet connections across policy routers.
2. Quality of service (QoS): Organizations can provide QoS to differentiated traffic by
setting the ToS values in the IP packet headers in routers at the periphery of the network
and then leveraging queuing mechanisms to prioritize traffic in the network’s core or
backbone. This setup improves network performance by eliminating the need to classify
the traffic explicitly at each WAN interface in the network’s core or backbone.
3. Cost savings: An organization can direct the bulk traffic associated with a specific activity
to use a higher-bandwidth, high-cost link for a short time and to continue basic connectivity
over a lower-bandwidth, low-cost link for interactive traffic. For example, a dial-on-
demand Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) line could be brought up in response
to traffic destined for a finance server; PBR would select this link.
4. Load sharing: In addition to the dynamic load-sharing capabilities offered by destination-
based routing, network managers can implement policies to distribute traffic among
multiple paths based on the traffic characteristics.

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