In this post i'm going to detail what static routes are and how to set them up.
A packet needs to know howto get from one network to another. To achieve this you can either use static or dynamic routes.
One of the benifits of using static routes is it gives you complete control over where the packets go which is great from a security point of view. The downside is that as your network grows, so does the administrative overhead.
Below I'm just going to detail how to set up routing between 2 networks.
Router 1 (R1)
FastEthernet 0/0 - 192.168.1.1/24
Router 2 (R2)
FastEthernet 0/0 - 192.168.1.2/24
FastEthernet 0/1 - 192.168.2.1/24
Router 3 (R3)
FastEthernet 0/0 - 192.168.2.2/24
Looking at my routing table on R3 I can see that I just have the connected network of 192.168.2.0
Router3#show ip route
Gateway of last resort is not set
C 192.168.2.0/24 is directly connected, FastEthernet0/0
I'll set up a new static route to the network 192.168.1.0 . I use the IP ROUTE command, list the network I want to get to and either the interface i'll be going out of or the next hop address.
Router3#configure terminal
Router3(config)#ip route 192.168.1.0 255.255.255.0 192.168.2.1
Router3(config)#end
Router3#show ip route
Gateway of last resort is not set
S 192.168.1.0/24 [1/0] via 192.168.2.1
C 192.168.2.0/24 is directly connected, FastEthernet0/0
I'll talk here a bit about administrative distances. Administrative distances are importantant in routing as each route will have one and that will be the router that the router places in the routing table.
As shown above we have 2 routes. One a Static (preceeded with a S) and the other a directly connected route (preceeded with a C)
By default, connected routes will have an administrative distance of 0 and static routes will be 1.
I could override the defaults by adding an administrative distance at the end of the command. This would be useful in creating static routes with values that are higher than those used by dynamic routing protocols. Then if a dynamic routing protocol is implimeted is will be entered into the routing table and used instead of the static route.
Now I try to ping the remote network and as long as that network knows how to get back to me my ping succeeds.
Router3#ping 192.168.1.1
Type escape sequence to abort.
Sending 5, 100-byte ICMP Echos to 192.168.1.1, timeout is 2 seconds:
!!!!!
Success rate is 100 percent (5/5), round-trip min/avg/max = 60/77/140 ms
Another option that can be appended to the end of the static route is PERMANENT. If this is used the route will stay in the routing table no matter what. Below is an example:
Router3#configure terminal
Router3(config)#ip route 192.168.1.0 255.255.255.0 fastethernet 0/0 permanent
Router3(config)#end
Here endeth my static routing post!
