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Cisco Nexus 7000 Series NX-OS Unicast Routing Configuration Guide, Release 4.x
OL-20002-02
Chapter 1      Overview
Information About Layer 3 Unicast Routing
Administrative Distance
An administrative distance is a rating of the trustworthiness of a routing information source. The higher 
the value, the lower the trust rating. Typically, a route can be learned through more than one protocol. 
Administrative distance is used to discriminate between routes learned from more than one protocol. The 
route with the lowest administrative distance is installed in the IP routing table. 
Stub Routing
You can use stub routing in a hub-and-spoke network topology, where one or more end (stub) networks 
are connected to a remote router (the spoke) that is connected to one or more distribution routers (the 
hub). The remote router is adjacent only to one or more distribution routers. The only route for IP traffic 
to follow into the remote router is through a distribution router. This type of configuration is commonly 
used in WAN topologies in which the distribution router is directly connected to a WAN. The distribution 
router can be connected to many more remote routers. Often, the distribution router is connected to 100 
or more remote routers. In a hub-and-spoke topology, the remote router must forward all nonlocal traffic 
to a distribution router, so it becomes unnecessary for the remote router to hold a complete routing table. 
Generally, the distribution router sends only a default route to the remote router. 
Only specified routes are propagated from the remote (stub) router. The stub router responds to all 
queries for summaries, connected routes, redistributed static routes, external routes, and internal routes 
with the message “inaccessible.” A router that is configured as a stub sends a special peer information 
packet to all neighboring routers to report its status as a stub router.
Any neighbor that receives a packet informing it of the stub status does not query the stub router for any 
routes, and a router that has a stub peer does not query that peer. The stub router depends on the 
distribution router to send the proper updates to all peers.
Figure 1-2 shows a simple hub-and-spoke configuration.
Figure 1-2 Simple Hub-and-Spoke Network
Stub routing does not prevent routes from being advertised to the remote router. Figure 1-2 shows that 
the remote router can access the corporate network and the Internet through the distribution router only. 
A full route table on the remote router, in this example, serves no functional purpose because the path to 
the corporate network and the Internet would always be through the distribution router. A larger route 
table would reduce only the amount of memory required by the remote router. The bandwidth and 
memory used can be lessened by summarizing and filtering routes in the distribution router. In this 
network topology, the remote router does not need to receive routes that have been learned from other 
Internet
Coporate
network
Distribution
router
(hub)
Remote
router
(spoke)
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