Cisco Route Administrative Distances

When a Cisco router learns a specific route from multiple sources, the router considers various criteria to elect which of the routes to use to reach that network. For example, a router may have a static route to 192.168.0.0/24, but also learns the route to 192.168.0.0/24 via OSPF. The router will select which route to use based on variables such as metrics, prefix length, and administrative distance.

Each type of route has an assigned administrative distance value. Route types with lower adminstrative distance values are preferred over higher distances.