The explosion of technology and the world’s dependence on it means that the reliability of a network is incredibly important. As the bits and bytes carried across networks become more valuable, the high availability of these networks is more relevant than ever. The revenue stream of a major financial customer who purchases managed virtual private network (VPN) services from a global ISP depends on the network’s availability. When the chairman of the Federal Reserve finally delivers good news after weeks of market turmoil, news that sparks a buying frenzy, older peering routers at the provider’s Point of Presence (POP) could get overloaded. This strain on the older devices could, in turn, ramp up the CPU, causing the routing protocols to fail, which in turn would delay market orders, causing the loss of millions of dollars.
At the same time, in another part of town, another customer of the ISP is experiencing issues. A hospital’s ER department needs to access a patient’s medical records to prescribe appropriate medication. Because of the nature of the medication, access to the patient’s medical history is imperative. Time is ticking and, all of a sudden, the ER loses access to the central database. The local IT department reports that the core network router has crashed, and meanwhile the patient is suffering.
These two failure scenarios emphasize the importance of high availability features in next-generation networks and services to minimize the effect of such network failures. This chapter addresses system-based availability; specifically, high availability and redundancy of the routing engine (RE) and the routing protocols that run on the router or switch.
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