Enterasys atx Betriebsanweisung

1-36

Introduction

receives a response, it knows its network range and then performs 
additional AARP probes to choose a host number. The router then 
sends RTMP requests to begin building its routing table. Next the 
router asks other routers for a list of zones so it can create a zone 
list. Although a router maintains a list of zones, it does not reside 
in a zone the way an end-node does.

The first router up on the network must choose its network and 
zone information. This is called the seed router. Any router that is 
configured with network and zone information is capable of acting 
as the seed router. When a router discovers, via lack of RTMP 
response, that no other routers are active on the network, the 
router uses its configured information to seed the network.

Seeding is an event not a state. Once the first router seeds the 
network, all other routers respond to all requests whether they 
were originally configured as the seed router or not. This allows 
the network to remain operational even if the original seed router 
goes down. A seed router holds no special status once the network 
is seeded.

A router must have BOTH a valid network range and zone list 
configured for a port to enable it to perform seeding. A network 
range of 0-0 is the default and is considered to be unconfigured. A 
router with a network range of 0-0 cannot be the seed router.

Also note that at least one, but potentially any number of routers 
on a network may be configured to be capable of seeding. All 
routers on a given network that are configured to seed should be 
configured identically. If this is not the case, an error is flagged and 
the offending router uses the already seeded information. In order 
to change zones for a network, all routers on the network must be 
rebooted in order to re-acquire their addresses.