what is routing code "candidate default"(mark "*")?

[raymond.chuang]

Has anyone tell what is "candidate default"? By the way, we often see one route path has been marked "*" on its prefix when multiple equal cost route paths presenting at "show ip route x.x.x.x". What does it mean?

[shivlu jain]

Unlike the ip default-gateway command, you can use ip default-network when ip routing is enabled on the Cisco router. When you configure ip default-network the router considers routes to that network for installation as the gateway of last resort on the router.

For every network configured with ip default-network, if a router has a route to that network, that route is flagged as a candidate default route

http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/105/default.html

regards

shivlu

[raymond.chuang]

I am not looking for the default route & default-network different. Has anyone know the meaning on the "*" of equal-cost route presenting at "show ip route x.x.x.x"? From the attached example file, it can see a "*" on prefix of route path 20.20.20.1.

Thanks,

Raymond

[Jon Marshall · Accepted solution]

Hi

When you have equal cost paths to a destination the router will do per-packet or per-destination load sharing.

The * is next to the route that is being used at that precise moment for forwarding packets. If you kept running the same command "sh ip route x.x.x.x" you should see the * moving between the three route entries.

HTH

Jon