Difference Between Static, Aggregate and Generate Routes in JUNOS.

In a nutshell:

- A static route is the most obvious. You need to be able to reach a certain prefix and you specify the next-hop. This is useful when you are not running dynamic routing protocols and/or when you want to override what a dynamic protocol dictates (since the protocol-preference for a static-route is lower -preferred- than that of any dynamic RP).

- An aggregate route is a route you define but which is not used for forwarding traffic (next-hop is discard or reject). It is purely used to advertise this router's connectivity which is why it needs at least one contributing route (a route which belongs to the advertised subnet but with a longer mask - these are the ones used to forward the traffic). Typically, the aggregate route would be advertised into BGP (if it is active thanks to contributing routes) - BGP does not like dealing with routes which are too specific - it prefers aggregates.

- A generated route is technically an aggregate route but which can be used to forward traffic. Traffic which matches the generated route (and not more specific routes) will be forwarded using the same next-hop as the first contributing route. A generated-route is typically combined with a policy to match which routes we want to be contributing and thus used as NHs. The generated-route is typically the default 0/0 with a policy matching to upstream routes - ie: provide connectivity if certain upstream routes exist.

Order of Preference of Nexthop in Generate Route.

- route with lowest protocol preference (eg: statics are preferred)
- route with numerically lowest IP address as tie breaker (eg: 10.1.1.0/24 is preferred over 11.1.1.0/30)



Generated routes are very similar to aggregate routes, with one exception: generated routes inherit a real next-hop interface, while aggregate routes only allow discard or reject as next-hops.
For example, the following config:
routing-options {
aggregate {
route 192.168.16.0/21;
}
generate {
route 10.0.0.0/16;
}
}
Results in:
lab@lab> show route protocol aggregate
inet.0: 57 destinations, 60 routes (57 active, 0 holddown, 0 hidden)
+ = Active Route, - = Last Active, * = Both
10.0.0.0/16 *[Aggregate/130] 00:00:04
                   > via so-0/0/0.0 <<<<<<REAL NEXT HOP (inherited from contributor)
192.168.16.0/21 *[Aggregate/130] 1d 08:33:02
                         Reject <<<<<<Reject is the default (can be configured to discard)
Note that they both show up in the routing table as protcol type Aggregate.