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Cisco CCNA 3.4 Cisco CCNA 3.2
TechKnowSurge Catalog Interactives Load-Balanced or One Path?
InteractiveNetworkFree

Load-Balanced or One Path?

Equal costs, unequal costs, a static route in the mix: does the router share the load or use one path?

⚑ Complete this interactive to capture a CTF flag worth 5 points.

About this interactive

OSPF load-balances when two things match on the paths to one network: - the **administrative distance** (110 for every OSPF route), and - the **metric**, the cost. By default it uses up to **four** equal-cost paths. The maximum-paths setting under the OSPF process changes that, up to 16 in the lesson, or down to 1 to turn load balancing off. A route from a source with a lower distance (a static route) wins outright, and metrics from different protocols are never compared. EIGRP, unlike OSPF, can also balance across paths of unequal cost.

What you'll learn

Aligned to

Cisco CCNA
3.4 Configure and verify single area OSPFv2
3.2 Determine how a router makes a forwarding decision by default

Key terms

Equal-Cost Load Balancing
A routing feature that distributes traffic across multiple paths that share the same administrative distance and metric.
Maximum Paths
An OSPF configuration parameter set under the router OSPF process that controls the number of equal-cost routes used for load balancing, with a default of 4 and a maximum of 16.
Administrative Distance
A value assigned to a route that indicates its trustworthiness or preference; lower values are preferred when multiple routes to the same destination exist.
OSPF Cost
A metric assigned to each router interface, calculated by dividing the reference bandwidth by the interface bandwidth; lower cost indicates a preferred path.

Topics

Ospf Load Balancing Equal Cost Maximum Paths Interactive Streak Sort

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