Routing table content

A routing protocol such as OSPFv3 develops its own database of routes. When the protocol has more than one route to a destination, it selects the route with the lowest administrative distance and inserts this route into the routing table. For each such route, the routing table maintains the following data:

Parameter

Use

Destination (IPv6 network prefix)

Composed of the contiguous, high-order bits in a packet's destination network prefix that must match the destination network prefix in the routing table entry. For example: 
Address:   2001:db8:1ad:0:218:71ff:fedd:cf00/64
Prefix:    2001:db8:1ad:0/64

Address:   2626:17b:1:1: 218:71ff:fedd:cf00/48
Prefix:    2626:17b:1/48

Gateway

The next-hop router in the path to the destination. It can be either the IPv6 address of the next directly connected router or the IP routing interface to use for forwarding the routed traffic toward its destination. If an IPv6 address is used, it can be either the link-local or global unicast address of the interface on the next-hop router.

Type (route type)

Connected:

A destination configured on the routing switch itself and can be a loopback interface, a global unicast address, or a link-local address.

Static:

A manually configured route to a destination on another router.

OSPF3:

A route discovered by the OSPFv3 protocol running on the routing switch.

Subtype

Applies to OSPFv3 routes only.

Distance (Administrative Distance)

Used to compare routes to the same destination, learned by different routing methods, to select the best route. The distance for connected routes is always 0. The default distance for static and dynamic routes is configurable; Default: 1.

Metric

Calculated by the routing switch and used to compare different routes, learned by the same routing method, to select the best overall route.