[Babel-users] A few examples of redistribution

[Juliusz Chroboczek]

I've had a couple of chats over IRC those last days that show that
people are confused about the new redistribution statements in Babel 0.10.
So here are a few real-world examples.

0. Preliminaries

Any routes that you redistribute into Babel must have an explicit
protocol attached.  If you use another routing daemon, it should do
that right.  If you install your routes manually, you need to specify
``proto static'' on the ``ip'' command line.  So if you used to say

    # route add default gw 1.2.3.4

you now need to say

    # ip route add default via 1.2.3.4 proto static

You can check whether your current routes can be redistributed into
Babel by typing ``ip route show''.  If a route has no ``proto'' field,
Babel will ignore it.  (If it says ``proto 42'', it's a Babel route.)

Under no circumstances should you use -X.  -X is dangerous, and it
will cause persistent routing loops if you are not careful.

Instead of -X, you should install a static route and redistribute it
cleanly.  The static route can of course be a blackhole route; so if
you used to say

  -X 192.168.5.0/24 128

you should say instead

  # ip route add unreachable 192.168.5.0/24 proto static

and then, in babel.conf,

  redistribute 192.168.5.0/24 le 24 metric 128


1. Ordinary mesh node

Pirx only participates in Babel routing, and does not serve as a gateway.
It only redistributes its local addresses, and redistributes all of them,
so no babel.conf is necessary.


2. Mesh node with a wired link, no redistribution

Beta is a mesh node that happens to be attached to an Ethernet.  It
has a single IPv6 address, but two IPv4 addresses: 192.168.4.26 on the
mesh network, and 192.168.1.26 on the Ethernet; it redistributes its
IPv6 address, its IPv4 mesh address, but not its Ethernet address.

Its babel.conf says:

  redistribute local ip 192.168.4.0/24
  redistribute local ip ::/0
  redistribute local deny


3. IPv4 gateway

Coloquinte is our Ipv4 gateway.  It redistributes its IPv6 address,
and a default route to the IPv4 Internet.  It does not redistribute
its own IPv4 address, which is subsumed by the default route:

  redistribute local ip ::/0
  redistribute local deny
  redistribute 0.0.0.0/0 le 0 metric 128

The ``le 0'' means that only the default route will be redistributed,
which avoids issues if coloquinte were to acquire additional IPv4
routes.


4. Traditional gateway

One of my users has a number of pure IPv4 mesh nodes, each of which is
on its own /28.  The various /28 are disjoint, so there's no need to
redistribute local addresses in addition to the /28 routes:

  redistribute local deny
  redistribute ip 10.0.0.0/8 le 28 metric 128


5. IPv6 gateway

Alpha is similar to Beta, but it additionally participates in RIPng
routing and redistributes the default route into the mesh network:

  redistribute local ip 192.168.4.0/24
  redistribute local ip ::/0
  redistribute local deny
  redistribute ip ::/0 le 0 metric 196

Again, ``le 0'' is used to only redistribute the default route; this
avoids dumping the whole RIPng routing table of Paris 6 and 7 into the
mesh network.


6. Hybrid gateway

Huponomos is another IPv6 gateway, but it also plays a role with
respect to IPv4 routing.  In addition to everything that alpha does,
it redistributes its local address in 134.157.168.0/24, as well as
a local route to 134.157.168.0/25 (that's not a typo: /25, not /24 --
the /24 is subnetted).  It has some other IPv4 addresses, which it
does not redistribute.  Additionally, it rejects any IPv6 routes that
come from coloquinte (2001:41d0:1:6364::1):

  redistribute local ip ::/0
  redistribute local ip 134.157.168.0/24
  redistribute local ip 192.168.4.0/24
  redistribute local deny
  redistribute ip ::/0 eq 0 proto 11 metric 128
  redistribute ip 134.157.168.0/24 le 25 metric 128
  in ip ::/0 le 32 id 2001:41d0:1:6364::1 deny

Note that the default IPv6 route is redistributed with metric 128,
while alpha redistributes it with the slightly larger metric 196; this
is so that traffic from beta, which is a neighbour of both, will flow
through huponomos rather than alpha.

Hope this helps,

                                        Juliusz