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Route States

A topology table entry for a destination can have one of two states. A route is considered in the Passive state when a router is not performing a route recomputation. The route is in Active state when a router is undergoing a route recomputation. If there are always feasible successors, a route never has to go into Active state and avoids a route recomputation. When there are no feasible successors, a route goes into Active state and a route recomputation occurs. A route recomputation commences with a router sending a query packet to all neighbors. Neighboring routers can either reply if they have feasible successors for the destination or optionally return a query indicating that they are performing a route recomputation. While in Active state, a router cannot change the next-hop neighbor it is using to forward packets. Once all replies are received for a given query, the destination can transition to Passive state and a new successor can be selected. When a link to a neighbor that is the only feasible successor goes down, all routes through that neighbor commence a route recomputation and enter the Active state.