Advertise routes in simple switched network

Question

I'm trying to build a fairly simple network.

I've got a few devices acting as the network core, which are basically all connected to each other by a simple Ethernet switch. Each of these devices (I call the "core-nodes") can therefore directly talk to every other over Layer 2. They are all contained in the 10.32.0.0/24 subnet. (All the core-nodes are connected via a B.A.T.M.A.N. Advanced Mesh, which behaves as a simple Layer 2 switch)

These core-nodes now each have different networks attached to them, which they can route traffic to. I want to setup all core-nodes in a way, that they simply annouce all routes they have to the other nodes. I tried setting up something like BGP, but I think this is too complicated for this job.

Although it would be pretty easy to just set all routes statically, this is a highly dynamic network with core-nodes appearing and disappering on a daily bases, and having different networks routed behind each of them.

Is there a simple protocol to just announce routes to other devices, without all the fancy stuff of pathfinding etc.? I think it would be pretty easy to develop such a stupid protocol, but I don't want to re-invent the wheel.

Thanks!

Answer 1

This is exactly what protocols like OSPF are designed to do, so please don't invent another one :-). For example, if one of your devices has the following networks attached:

   192.168.11.0/24
   192.168.12.0/24
   192.168.13.0/24,

the you would say (in Cisco IOS language):

 router ospf 100
  network 10.32.0.0 0.0.0.255 area 0
  network 192.168.11.0 0.0.0.255 area 0
  network 192.168.12.0 0.0.0.255 area 0
  network 192.168.13.0 0.0.0.255 area 0

So you can see that every device only has to configure its own networks, and the protocol does the rest.

Note that this will only work because you said your core devices are connected over a switched ethernet network (or something that behaves like it).