Packet Forwarding

If the route entry indicates that the egress interface is a directly connected network, this means that the destination IP address of the packet belongs to a device on the directly connected network. Therefore, the packet can be forwarded directly to the destination device. The destination device is typically an end device on an Ethernet LAN, which means the packet must be encapsulated in an Ethernet frame.

To encapsulate the packet in the Ethernet frame, the router needs to determine the destination MAC address associated with the destination IP address of the packet. The process varies based on whether the packet is an IPv4 or IPv6 packet:

• IPv4 packet - The router checks its ARP table for the destination IPv4 address and an associated Ethernet MAC address. If there is no match, the router sends an ARP Request. The destination device will return an ARP Reply with its MAC address. The router can now forward the IPv4 packet in an Ethernet frame with the proper destination MAC address.
• IPv6 packet - The router checks its neighbor cache for the destination IPv6 address and an associated Ethernet MAC address. If there is no match, the router sends an ICMPv6 Neighbor Solicitation (NS) message. The destination device will return an ICMPv6 Neighbor Advertisement (NA) message with its MAC address. The router can now forward the IPv6 packet in an Ethernet frame with the proper destination MAC address.

If the route entry indicates that the destination IP address is on a remote network, this means the destination IP address of the packet belongs to a device on network that is not directly connected. Therefore, the packet must be forwarded to another router, specifically a next-hop router. The next-hop address is indicated in the route entry.

If the forwarding router and the next-hop router are on an Ethernet network, a similar process (ARP and ICMPv6 Neighbor Discovery) will occur for determining the destination MAC address of the packet as described previously. The difference is that the router will search for the IP address of the next-hop router in its ARP table or neighbor cache, instead of the destination IP address of the packet.

Note: This process will vary for other types of Layer 2 networks.

If there is no match between the destination IP address and a prefix in the routing table, and if there is no default route, the packet will be dropped.

In the first animation, PC1 sends a packet to PC2. Note that if an ARP entry does not exist in the ARP table for the default gateway of 192.168.1.1, PC1 sends an ARP request. Router R1 would then return an ARP reply.

R1 now forwards the packet to PC2. Because the exit interface is on an Ethernet network, R1 must resolve the next-hop IPv4 address with a destination MAC address using its ARP table. If an ARP entry does not exist in the ARP table for the next-hop interface of 192.168.2.2, R1 sends an ARP request. R2 would then return an ARP Reply.

R2 now forwards the packet to R3. Because the exit interface is not an Ethernet network, R2 does not have to resolve the next-hop IPv4 address with a destination MAC address. When the interface is a point-to-point (P2P) serial connection, the router encapsulates the IPv4 packet into the proper data link frame format used by the exit interface (HDLC, PPP, etc.). Because there are no MAC addresses on serial interfaces, R2 sets the data link destination address to an equivalent of a broadcast.

R3 now forwards the packet to PC2. Because the destination IPv4 address is on a directly connected Ethernet network, R3 must resolve the destination IPv4 address of the packet with its associated MAC address. If the entry is not in the ARP table, R3 sends an ARP request out of its FastEthernet 0/0 interface. PC2 would then return an ARP reply with its MAC address.

An older packet forwarding mechanism still available for Cisco routers. When a packet arrives on an interface, it is forwarded to the control plane where the CPU matches the destination address with an entry in its routing table, and then determines the exit interface and forwards the packet. It is important to understand that the router does this for every packet, even if the destination is the same for a stream of packets. This process-switching mechanism is very slow and is rarely implemented in modern networks. Contrast this with fast switching.

Fast switching is another, older packet forwarding mechanism which was the successor to process switching. Fast switching uses a fast-switching cache to store next-hop information. When a packet arrives on an interface, it is forwarded to the control plane where the CPU searches for a match in the fast-switching cache. If it is not there, it is process-switched and forwarded to the exit interface. The flow information for the packet is also stored in the fast-switching cache. If another packet going to the same destination arrives on an interface, the next-hop information in the cache is re-used without CPU intervention.

With fast switching, notice how only the first packet of a flow is process-switched and added to the fast-switching cache. The next four packets are quickly processed based on the information in the fast-switching cache.

CEF is the most recent and default Cisco IOS packet-forwarding mechanism. Like fast switching, CEF builds a Forwarding Information Base (FIB), and an adjacency table. However, the table entries are not packet-triggered like fast switching but change-triggered, such as when something changes in the network topology. Therefore, when a network has converged, the FIB and adjacency tables contain all the information that a router would have to consider when forwarding a packet. Cisco Express Forwarding is the fastest forwarding mechanism and the default on Cisco routers and multilayer switches.

CEF builds the FIB and adjacency tables after the network has converged. All five packets are quickly processed in the data plane.