Subject: Re: ORIGINATOR_ID in Route Reflectors

From: Danny McPherson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 07:38:48 -0700

> If a RR Client sends an UPDATE without an ORIGINATOR_ID attribute, what is
> the value of the ORIGINATOR_ID that the RR should use, before advertising
> the UPDATE to its RR peers? Should it be its own Router ID or the RR
> client's (which sent the UPDATE) Router ID?

Note that an RR client does NOT add the ORIGINATOR_ID attribute, it's added
by the route reflector and set to the ROTUER_ID of the client.  This initially
provided the ability for deployments where a client didn't need to know it was 
a client.  

However, RFC 2796 changed things slightly (perhaps in order to accommodate 
implementations where for performance purposes the RR reflected routes learned 
from a client back to that client) by requiring that clients "ignore" received
routes if the ORIGINATOR_ID is equal to the local ROUTER_ID.

In addition to adding the ORIGINATOR_ID attribute to the route, the RR also 
creates a CLUSTER_LIST and places the local CLUSTER_ID value (which is 
by default usually the RR's ROUTER_ID or otherwise some explicitly configured 
value) in the list.

RFC 2796 is clear about these behaviors.  
 
-danny