In Junos OS, particularly in BGP-based environments like EVPN-VXLAN or MPLS, the router often needs to perform a recursive lookup to resolve the BGP next-hop of a route.
Next-Hop Resolution (Option C): When an EVPN route (found in default-switch.evpn.0) is received, the protocol next-hop is typically the loopback IP of the remote VTEP. To actually forward traffic, the switch must know how to reach that loopback IP.
The inet.3 table is the default table in Junos used to store egress interface information for BGP next-hops.
While inet.0 handles standard unicast routing, inet.3 is specifically consulted for resolving the path toward BGP peers. In an EVPN context, this ensures that the VXLAN tunnel endpoint is reachable and properly resolved through the underlay.
Other Tables: * inet.2 (Option A) is used for Multicast RPF checks.
default-switch.evpn.0 (Option B) stores the EVPN routes themselves (MAC/IP), but it is the source of the lookup, not the table where the recursive resolution occurs.
vxlan.inet (Option D) is an internal table used to track active VXLAN tunnels but is not the primary table for recursive BGP next-hop validation.
