This document outlines the steps for understanding when to use and how to configure policy-based routing (PBR) on Ericsson Cradlepoint routers.
By default, Ericsson Cradlepoint routers forward packets based on the main routing table. PBR enables the creation of a route policy that can match specific packets and direct them to a separate policy route table for forwarding.
Route policies can be defined to match packets based on factors such as IP version, source address, destination address, and ingress device (interface). Within the route policy, you specify the policy route table to be used for matching packets.
If a packet matches a route policy and is directed to a policy route table, but the destination address does not match a static route within that policy route table, the router will default to the main routing table for packet forwarding. To prevent this fallback behavior, you must create a route with an all-zero address leading to device "null0" at the end of your policy route table.
For a policy route designed to match all ingress-device traffic on a LAN, you should configure it to match based on the source interface. However, if you use the source IP range of the LAN, it may inadvertently match router-originated or proxied traffic, potentially causing DNS resolution failures for Ericsson Cradlepoint router or hotspot authentications.
In this PBR implementation, multiple routing tables can be created, similar to VRF-Lite. These tables exist outside of the main routing table and are used exclusively with static routing (dynamic routing is not yet supported). Additionally, routing protocols cannot be redistributed to or from any policy route table.
A policy route table remains inactive by itself until it is associated with a route policy, and by default, it will not process any traffic.