User`s guide

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Introduction

receives a response, it knows its network range and then performs

additional AARP probes to choose a host number. The router then

sends RTMP requests to begin building its routing table. Next the

router asks other routers for a list of zones so it can create a zone

list. Although a router maintains a list of zones, it does not reside

in a zone the way an end-node does.

Note: An AppleTalk internet router cannot have two ports connected to

the same network.

Seed Routers

The ﬁrst router up on the network must choose its network and

zone information. This is called the seed router. Any router that is

conﬁgured with network and zone information is capable of acting

as the seed router. When a router discovers, via lack of RTMP

response, that no other routers are active on the network, the

router uses its conﬁgured information to seed the network.

Seeding is an event not a state. Once the ﬁrst router seeds the

network, all other routers respond to all requests whether they

were originally conﬁgured as the seed router or not. This allows

the network to remain operational even if the original seed router

goes down. A seed router holds no special status once the network

is seeded.

A router must have BOTH a valid network range and zone list

conﬁgured for a port to enable it to perform seeding. A network

range of 0-0 is the default and is considered to be unconﬁgured. A

router with a network range of 0-0 cannot be the seed router.

Also note that at least one, but potentially any number of routers

on a network may be conﬁgured to be capable of seeding. All

routers on a given network that are conﬁgured to seed should be

conﬁgured identically. If this is not the case, an error is ﬂagged and

the offending router uses the already seeded information. In order

to change zones for a network, all routers on the network must be

rebooted in order to re-acquire their addresses.