A route server is a type of
Server that is used in
Network engineering. The original role of a route server was to be an easily accessible source of
Routing
Routing is the process of selecting a path for traffic in a Network theory, network or between or across multiple networks. Broadly, routing is performed in many types of networks, including circuit-switched networks, such as the public switched ...
information about a particular network, for other machines as well as for remote network engineers that would need that information to troubleshoot network issues.
Modern implementations have taken on more roles, the most common being
Route aggregation
A supernetwork, or supernet, is an Internet Protocol (IP) network that is formed by aggregation of multiple networks (or subnets) into a larger network. The new routing prefix for the aggregate network represents the constituent networks in a s ...
. The
Border Gateway Protocol
Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is a standardized exterior gateway protocol designed to exchange routing and reachability information among autonomous systems (AS) on the Internet. BGP is classified as a path-vector routing protocol, and it ...
normally requires
Peers to maintain sessions with every other peer they could potentially send or receive traffic from, but a route server can aggregate these sessions and make them available for several peers.
Further reading
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References
External links
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* {{Cite web
, url = https://www.ams-ix.net/ams/documentation/ams-ix-route-servers
, publisher =
AMS-IX
, title = AMS-IX Route Servers
Internet governance
Internet Standards