Routing – How do apps know about asymmetric routing

asymmetric-routingrouting

We made did a campus LAN upgrade recently, during which we migrated from a mixed EIGRP/OSPF IGP to a multi-area OSPF redistributing to/from BGP on our WAN. We have two entry points on different sides of the campus with two different AS' numbers, so not running iBGP. We accidentally introduced asymmetric routing to our WAN, which we bandaided with static routes. We're working on changing the routing – using the same AS and running iBGP between the two routers to the WAN, sending community strings changing the provider's local pref, etc.

Question is: Why did the asymmetric routing – going out router1, coming back router2 – why did it matter to the applications? How do the applications know there's asymmetric routing? What immediately broke for us was XEN desktops, and Microsoft Remote Desktop. I can understand how the network would be able to tell with something like URPF, but why does it matter to applications and how do they know?

Best Answer

If you're doing NAT on your WAN routers, that would definitely get you. You'd create a dynamic translation on Router1 as that is your best path to the destination. The destination then uses a different path to get to the source, and uses Router2. Router 2 has no NAT entry for that IP, and drops the traffic.

I've got my money on NAT issues. Stupid NAT! =)