Ospf Design Guide

OSPF DESIGN GUIDE

Cisco Systems
Network Supported Accounts
Rev: 1.1 April, 1996

Sam Halabi
Network Consulting Engineer

The Open Shortest Path First Protocol (OSPF), defined in RFC 1583, is an
Interior Gateway Protocol used to distribute routing information within
a single Autonomous System. This paper examines how OSPF works and how it
can be used to design and build today’s large and complicated networks.

OSPF DESIGN GUIDE-NSA group April 25, 1996 1

1.0 Introduction..............................................................................................................4
1.1 OSPF vs. RIP .......................................................................................................................4
1.2 What do we mean by Link-States? ......................................................................................5
1.3 Link-State Algorithm ...........................................................................................................6
2.0 Shortest Path Algorithm...........................................................................................6
2.1 OSPF cost ............................................................................................................................6
2.2 Shortest Path Tree ................................................................................................................7
3.0 Areas and Border Routers........................................................................................8
4.0 Link-State Packets ...................................................................................................8
5.0 Enabling OSPF on the router .................................................................................10
6.0 OSPF Authentication .............................................................................................11
6.1 Simple password authentication ........................................................................................11
6.2 Message Digest authentication ..........................................................................................11
7.0 The Backbone and area 0.......................................................................................12
8.0 Virtual links............................................................................................................13
8.1 Areas not physically connected to area 0...........................................................................14
8.2 Partitioning the backbone ..................................................................................................15
9.0 Neighbors...............................................................................................................15
10.0 Adjacencies ............................................................................................................16
10.1 DR Election........................................................................................................................17
10.2 Building the Adjacency......................................................................................................17
10.3 Adjacencies on point-to-point interfaces ...........................................................................21
10.4 Adjacencies on Non-Broadcast Multi-Access (NBMA)....................................................21
11.0 Avoiding DRs and “neighbor” command on NBMA ............................................22
11.1 Point-to-point subinterfaces ...............................................................................................23
11.2 Selecting Interface Network Types ....................................................................................24
11.2.1 Point-to-multipoint interfaces..............................................................................24
11.2.2 Broadcast interfaces.............................................................................................27
12.0 OSPF and Route Summarization ...........................................................................28
12.1 Inter-area route summarization ..........................................................................................28
12.2 External route summarization ............................................................................................29
13.0 Stub Areas..............................................................................................................30
14.0 Redistributing routes into OSPF ............................................................................34
14.1 E1 vs. E2 external routes ...................................................................................................34
15.0 Redistributing OSPF into other protocols..............................................................38
15.1 Use of a valid metric ..........................................................................................................38
15.2 VLSM ................................................................................................................................38
15.3 Mutual Redistribution ........................................................................................................40
16.0 Injecting defaults into OSPF..................................................................................43
17.0 OSPF Design Tips..................................................................................................45


17.1 Number of routers per area ................................................................................................46
17.2 Number of neighbors .........................................................................................................46
17.3 Number of areas per ABR..................................................................................................46
17.4 Full mesh vs. Partial Mesh.................................................................................................47
17.5 Memory issues ...................................................................................................................47
18.0 Summary ................................................................................................................48
19.0 APPENDIX A: Link-State Database Synchronization ..........................................49
19.1 Link-State Advertisements................................................................................................51
19.2 OSPF database example....................................................................................................54
19.2.1 General view of the database..............................................................................57
19.2.2 Router Links .......................................................................................................58
19.2.3 Network Links ....................................................................................................59
19.2.4 Summary Links ..................................................................................................60
19.2.5 Summary ASBR Links .......................................................................................60
19.2.6 External Links ....................................................................................................61
19.2.7 The Full Database...............................................................................................63
20.0 APPENDIX B: OSPF and IP Multicast Addressing..............................................68
21.0 APPENDIX C: Variable Length Subnet Masks (VLSM) ......................................69


1.0 Introduction
OSPF (Open Shortest Path First) protocol was developed due to a need in
the internet community to introduce a high functionality non-proprietary
Internal Gateway Protocol (IGP) for the TCP/IP protocol family. The dis-
cussion of creating a common interoperable IGP for the Internet started
in 1988 and did not get formalized until 1991. At that time the OSPF
Working Group requested that OSPF be considered for advancement to Draft
Internet Standard.

The OSPF protocol is based on link-state technology which is a departure
from the Bellman-Ford vector based algorithms used in traditional Inter-
net routing protocols such as RIP. OSPF has introduced new concepts such
as authentication of routing updates, Variable Length Subnet Masks
(VLSM), route summarization, etc.

In the following chapters we will discuss the OSPF terminology, algorithm
and the pros and cons of the protocol in designing the large and compli-
cated networks of today.

1.1 OSPF vs. RIP
The rapid growth and expansion of today’s networks has pushed RIP to its
limits. RIP has certain limitations that could cause problems in large
networks:
• RIP has a limit of 15 hops. A RIP network that spans more than 15 hops
(15 routers) is considered unreachable.
• RIP cannot handle Variable Length Subnet Masks (VLSM). Given the
shortage of IP addresses and the flexibility VLSM gives in the effi-
cient assignment of IP addresses, this is considered a major flaw.
• Periodic broadcasts of the full routing table will consume a large
amount of bandwidth. This is a major problem with large networks espe-
cially on slow links and WAN clouds.
• RIP converges slower than OSPF. In large networks convergence gets to
be in the order of minutes. RIP routers will go through a period of a
hold-down and garbage collection and will slowly time-out information
that has not been received recently. This is inappropriate in large
environments and could cause routing inconsistencies.
• RIP has no concept of network delays and link costs. Routing decisions
are based on hop counts. The path with the lowest hop count to the des-
tination is always preferred even if the longer path has a better
aggregate link bandwidth and slower delays.
• RIP networks are flat networks. There is no concept of areas or bound-
aries. With the introduction of classless routing and the intelligent
use of aggregation and summarization, RIP networks seem to have fallen
behind.

Some enhancements were introduced in a new version of RIP called RIP2.
RIP2 addresses the issues of VLSM, authentication, and multicast routing
updates. RIP2 is not a big improvement over RIP (now called RIP 1)


because it still has the limitations of hop counts and slow convergence
which are essential in todays large networks.

OSPF, on the other hand, addresses most of the issues presented above:
• With OSPF, there is no limitation on the hop count.
• The intelligent use of VLSM is very useful in IP address allocation.
• OSPF uses IP multicast to send link-state updates. This ensures less
processing on routers that are not listening to OSPF packets. Also,
updates are only sent in case routing changes occur instead of period-
ically. This ensures a better use of bandwidth.
• OSPF has better convergence than RIP. This is because routing changes
are propagated instantaneously and not periodically.
• OSPF allows for better load balancing based on the actual cost of the
link. Link delays are a major factor in deciding where to send routing
updates.
• OSPF allows for a logical definition of networks where routers can be
divided into areas. This will limit the explosion of link state
updates over the whole network. This also provides a mechanism for
aggregating routes and cutting down on the unnecessary propagation of
subnet information.
• OSPF allows for routing authentication by using different methods of
password authentication.
• OSPF allows for the transfer and tagging of external routes injected
into an Autonomous System. This keeps track of external routes
injected by exterior protocols such as BGP.

This of course would lead to more complexity in configuring and trouble-
shooting OSPF networks. Administrators that are used to the simplicity of
RIP will be challenged with the amount of new information they have to
learn in order to keep up with OSPF networks. Also, this will introduce
more overhead in memory allocation and CPU utilization. Some of the rout-
ers running RIP might have to be upgraded in order to handle the overhead
caused by OSPF.

1.2 What do we mean by Link-States?
OSPF is a link-state protocol. We could think of a link as being an
interface on the router. The state of the link is a description of that
interface and of its relationship to its neighboring routers. A descrip-
tion of the interface would include, for example, the IP address of the
interface, the mask, the type of network it is connected to, the routers
connected to that network and so on. The collection of all these link-
states would form a link-state database.


1.3 Link-State Algorithm
OSPF uses a link-state algorithm in order to build and calculate the
shortest path to all known destinations. The algorithm by itself is quite
complicated. The following is a very high level, simplified way of look-
ing at the various steps of the algorithm:

1- Upon initialization or due to any change in routing information, a
router will generate a link-state advertisement. This advertisement will
represent the collection of all link-states on that router.

2- All routers will exchange link-states by means of flooding. Each
router that receives a link-state update should store a copy in its link-
state database and then propagate the update to other routers.

3- After the database of each router is completed, the router will cal-
culate a Shortest Path Tree to all destinations. The router uses the
Dijkstra algorithm to calculate the shortest path tree. The destina-
tions, the associated cost and the next hop to reach those destinations
will form the IP routing table.

4- In case no changes in the OSPF network occur, such as cost of a link
or a network being added or deleted, OSPF should be very quiet. Any
changes that occur are communicated via link-state packets, and the Dijk-
stra algorithm is recalculated to find the shortest path.

2.0 Shortest Path Algorithm
The shortest path is calculated using the Diskjtra algorithm. The algo-
rithm places each router at the root of a tree and calculates the short-
est path to each destination based on the cumulative cost required to
reach that destination. Each router will have its own view of the topol-
ogy even though all the routers will build a shortest path tree using the
same link-state database. The following sections indicate what is
involved in building a shortest path tree.

2.1 OSPF cost
The cost (also called metric) of an interface in OSPF is an indication of
the overhead required to send packets across a certain interface. The
cost of an interface is inversely proportional to the bandwidth of that
interface. A higher bandwidth indicates a lower cost. There is more over-
head (higher cost) and time delays involved in crossing a 56k serial line
than crossing a 10M ethernet line. The formula used to calculate the cost
is:

cost= 10000 0000/bandwith in bps

For example, it will cost 10 EXP8/10 EXP7 = 10 to cross a 10M ethernet
line and will cost 10 EXP8/1544000 = 64 to cross a T1 line.


By default, the cost of an interface is calculated based on the band-
width; you can force the cost of an interface by using the interface sub-
command:

ip ospf cost <value>

2.2 Shortest Path Tree
Assume we have the following network diagram with the indicated interface
costs. In order to build the shortest path tree for RTA, we would have to
make RTA the root of the tree and calculate the smallest cost for each
destination.

RTA

10 128.213.0.0
5
8
RTC
RTB
10
192.213.11.0 5
10
RTD
222.211.10.0 5

RTA

0 10 10

RTB
128.213.0.0 RTC
5 5
RTD
10
5
192.213.11.0 222.211.10.0

The above is the view of the network as seen from RTA. Note the direction
of the arrows in calculating the cost. For example, the cost of RTB’s
interface to network 128.213.0.0 is not relevant when calculating the
cost to 192.213.11.0. RTA can reach 192.213.11.0 via RTB with a cost of
15 (10+5). RTA can also reach 222.211.10.0 via RTC with a cost of 20
(10+10) or via RTB with a cost of 20 (10+5+5). In case equal cost paths
exist to the same destination, Cisco’s implementation of OSPF will keep
track of up to six next hops to the same destination.


After the router builds the shortest path tree, it will start building
the routing table accordingly. Directly connected networks will be
reached via a metric (cost) of 0 and other networks will be reached
according to the cost calculated in the tree.

3.0 Areas and Border Routers
As previously mentioned, OSPF uses flooding to exchange link-state
updates between routers. Any change in routing information is flooded to
all routers in the network. Areas are introduced to put a boundary on the
explosion of link-state updates. Flooding and calculation of the Dijk-
stra algorithm on a router is limited to changes within an area. All
routers within an area have the exact link-state database. Routers that
belong to multiple areas, called area border routers (ABR), have the duty
of disseminating routing information or routing changes between areas.

AS100 Area Border Router
RIP

Internal Router
Autonomous System
Border Router (ASBR)

BGP

AS200

An area is interface specific. A router that has all of its interfaces
within the same area is called an internal router (IR). A router that has
interfaces in multiple areas is called an area border router (ABR). Rout-
ers that act as gateways (redistribution)between OSPF and other routing
protocols (IGRP, EIGRP, IS-IS, RIP, BGP, Static) or other instances of
the OSPF routing process are called autonomous system border routers
(ASBR). Any router can be an ABR or an ASBR.

4.0 Link-State Packets
There are different types of Link State Packets, those are what you nor-
mally see in an OSPF database (Appendix A). The different types are
illustrated in the following diagram:


Summary Links
Router Links

ABR

Describe the state and cost
of the router’s links (interfaces)
to the area (Intra-area). Originated by ABRs only.
Describe networks in the AS
but outside of an Area (Inter-area).
Also describe the location of the ASBR.

Network Links External Links

DR

ASBR
Originated for multi-access segments
with more than one attached router.
Describe all routers attached to the
speciﬁc segment. Originated by a
Designated Router (discussed later on).
Originated by an ASBR.
Describe destinations external the
autonomous system or a default route
to the outside AS.

As indicated above, the router links are an indication of the state of
the interfaces on a router belonging to a certain area. Each router will
generate a router link for all of its interfaces. Summary links are gen-
erated by ABRs; this is how network reachability information is dissemi-
nated between areas. Normally, all information is injected into the
backbone (area 0) and in turn the backbone will pass it on to other
areas. ABRs also have the task of propagating the reachability of the
ASBR. This is how routers know how to get to external routes in other
ASs.

Network Links are generated by a Designated Router (DR) on a segment (DRs
will be discussed later). This information is an indication of all rout-
ers connected to a particular multi-access segment such as Ethernet,
Token Ring and FDDI (NBMA also).

External Links are an indication of networks outside of the AS. These
networks are injected into OSPF via redistribution. The ASBR has the task
of injecting these routes into an autonomous system.


5.0 Enabling OSPF on the router
Enabling OSPF on the router involves the following two steps in config
mode:

1- Enabling an OSPF process:

router ospf <process-id>

2- Assigning areas to the interfaces:

network <network or IP address> <mask> <area-id>

The OSPF process-id is a numeric value local to the router. It does not
have to match process-ids on other routers. It is possible to run multi-
ple OSPF processes on the same router, but is not recommended as it cre-
ates multiple database instances that add extra overhead to the router.

The network command is a way of assigning an interface to a certain area.
The mask is used as a shortcut and it helps putting a list of interfaces
in the same area with one line configuration line. The mask contains wild
card bits where 0 is a match and 1 is a “do not care” bit, e.g.
0.0.255.255 indicates a match in the first two bytes of the network num-
ber.

The area-id is the area number we want the interface to be in. The area-
id can be an integer between 0 and 4294967295 or can take a form similar
to an IP address A.B.C.D.

example:

Area 23 Area 0.0.0.0

E2 E0 192.213.11.1
RTA
128.213.1.1
E1 192.213.12.2

RTA#
interface Ethernet0
ip address 192.213.11.1 255.255.255.0

interface Ethernet1
ip address 192.213.12.2 255.255.255.0

interface Ethernet2
ip address 128.213.1.1 255.255.255.0

router ospf 100
network 192.213.0.0 0.0.255.255 area 0.0.0.0
network 128.213.1.1 0.0.0.0 area 23


The first network statement will put both E0 and E1 in the same area
0.0.0.0 and the second network statement will put E2 in area 23. Note the
mask of 0.0.0.0 which indicates a full match on the IP address. This is
an easy way to put an interface in a certain area if you are having prob-
lems figuring out a mask.

6.0 OSPF Authentication
It is possible to authenticate the OSPF packets such that routers can
participate in routing domains based on predefined passwords. By
default, a router uses a Null authentication which means that routing
exchanges over a network are not authenticated. Two other authentication
methods exist: Simple password authentication and Message Digest authen-
tication (md5).

6.1 Simple password authentication
Simple password authentication allows a password (key) to be configured
per area. Routers in the same area that want to participate in the rout-
ing domain will have to be configured with the same key. The drawback of
this method is that it is vulnerable to passive attacks. Anybody with a
link analyzer could easily get the password off the wire. To enable pass-
word authentication use the following commands:

ip ospf authentication-key key (this goes under the specific interface)

area area-id authentication (this goes under “router ospf <process-id>”)

example:

interface Ethernet0
ip address 10.10.10.10 255.255.255.0
ip ospf authentication-key mypassword

router ospf 10
network 10.10.0.0 0.0.255.255 area 0
area 0 authentication

6.2 Message Digest authentication
Message Digest Authentication is a cryptographic authentication. A key
(password) and key-id are configured on each router. The router uses an
algorithm based on the OSPF packet, the key, and the key-id to generate a
“message digest” that gets appended to the packet. Unlike the simple
authentication, the key is not exchanged over the wire. A non-decreasing
sequence number is also included in each OSPF packet to protect against
replay attacks.


This method also allows for uninterrupted transitions between keys. This
is helpful for administrators who wish to change the OSPF password with-
out disrupting communication. If an interface is configured with a new
key, the router will send multiple copies of the same packet, each
authenticated by different keys. The router will stop sending duplicate
packets once it detects that all of its neighbors have adopted the new
key. Following are the commands used for message digest authentication:

ip ospf message-digest-key keyid md5 key (used under the interface)

area area-id authentication message-digest (used under “router ospf
<process-id>”)

example:

interface Ethernet0
ip address 10.10.10.10 255.255.255.0
ip ospf message-digest-key 10 md5 mypassword

router ospf 10
network 10.10.0.0 0.0.255.255 area 0
area 0 authentication message-digest

7.0 The Backbone and area 0
OSPF has special restrictions when multiple areas are involved. If more
than one area is configured, one of these areas has be to be area 0. This
is called the backbone. When designing networks it is good practice to
start with area 0 and then expand into other areas later on.

The backbone has to be at the center of all other areas, i.e. all areas
have to be physically connected to the backbone. The reasoning behind
this is that OSPF expects all areas to inject routing information into
the backbone and in turn the backbone will disseminate that information
into other areas. The following diagram will illustrate the flow of
information in an OSPF network:


Intra-area routes

Area 1
Inter-area routes
(Summary routes)

Area 3

BACKBONE
Area 2
(0.0.0.0)

RIP
BGP

External routes

In the above diagram, all areas are directly connected to the backbone.
In the rare situations where a new area is introduced that cannot have a
direct physical access to the backbone, a virtual link will have to be
configured. Virtual links will be discussed in the next section. Note the
different types of routing information. Routes that are generated from
within an area (the destination belongs to the area) are called intra-
area routes. These routes are normally represented by the letter O in the
IP routing table. Routes that originate from other areas are called
inter-area or Summary routes. The notation for these routes is O IA in
the IP routing table. Routes that originate from other routing protocols
(or different OSPF processes) and that are injected into OSPF via redis-
tribution are called external routes. These routes are represented by O
E2 or O E1 in the IP routing table. Multiple routes to the same destina-
tion are preferred in the following order: intra-area, inter-area,
external E1, external E2. External types E1 and E2 will be explained
later.

8.0 Virtual links
Virtual links are used for two purposes:

1- Linking an area that does not have a physical connection to the back-
bone.

2- Patching the backbone in case discontinuity of area 0 occurs.


8.1 Areas not physically connected to area 0
As mentioned earlier, area 0 has to be at the center of all other areas.
In some rare case where it is impossible to have an area physically con-
nected to the backbone, a virtual link is used. The virtual link will
provide the disconnected area a logical path to the backbone. The virtual
link has to be established between two ABRs that have a common area, with
one ABR connected to the backbone. This is illustrated in the following
example:

Area 1
1.1.1.1
RTA
RTB
Area 0
VL 2.2.2.2
Area 2

In this example, area 1 does not have a direct physical connection into
area 0. A virtual link has to be configured between RTA and RTB. Area 2
is to be used as a transit area and RTB is the entry point into area 0.
This way RTA and area 1 will have a logical connection to the backbone.
In order to configure a virtual link, use the following router OSPF sub-
command on both RTA and RTB:

area <area-id> virtual-link <RID>

where area-id is the transit area. in the above diagram, this is area 2.
The RID is the router-id. The OSPF router-id is usually the highest IP
address on the box, or the highest loopback address if one exists. The
router-id is only calculated at boot time or anytime the OSPF process is
restarted. In order to find the router-id you can do a “sh ip ospf int”,
and the RID is listed there. Assuming that 1.1.1.1 and 2.2.2.2 are the
respective RIDs of RTA and RTB, the OSPF configuration for both routers
would be:

RTA#
router ospf 10
area 2 virtual-link 2.2.2.2

RTB#
router ospf 10
area 2 virtual-link 1.1.1.1


8.2 Partitioning the backbone
OSPF allows for linking discontinuous parts of the backbone using a vir-
tual link. In some cases, different area 0s need to be linked together.
This can occur if, for example, a company is trying to merge two separate
OSPF networks into one network with a common area 0. In other instances,
virtual-links are added for redundancy in case some router failure causes
the backbone to be split into two. Whatever the reason may be, a virtual
link can be configured between separate ABRs that touch area 0 from each
side and having a common area. This is illustrated in the following exam-
ple:

Area 1 Area 2

Area 3

VL
Area 0 Area 0

In the above diagram two area 0s are linked together via a virtual link.
In case a common area does not exist, an additional area, such as area 3,
could be created to become the transit area.

In case any area which is different than the backbone becomes parti-
tioned, the backbone will take care of the partitioning without using any
virtual links. One part of the partioned area will be known to the other
part via inter-area routes rather than intra-area routes.

9.0 Neighbors
Routers that share a common segment become neighbors on that segment.
Neighbors are elected via the Hello protocol. Hello packets are sent
periodically out of each interface using IP multicast (Appendix B). Rout-
ers become neighbors as soon as they see themselves listed in the neigh-
bor’s Hello packet. This way, a two way communication is guaranteed.
Neighbor negotiation applies to the primary address only. Secondary
addresses can be configured on an interface with a restriction that they
have to belong to the same area as the primary address.

Two routers will not become neighbors unless they agree on the following:

1- Area-id: Two routers having a common segment; their interfaces have to
belong to the same area on that segment. Of course, the interfaces should
belong to the same subnet and have a similar mask.

2- Authentication: OSPF allows for the configuration of a password for a
specific area. Routers that want to become neighbors have to exchange the
same password on a particular segment.


3- Hello and Dead Intervals: OSPF exchanges Hello packets on each seg-
ment. This is a form of keepalive used by routers in order to acknowledge
their existence on a segment and in order to elect a designated router
(DR) on multiaccess segments.The Hello interval specifies the length of
time, in seconds, between the hello packets that a router sends on an
OSPF interface. The dead interval is the number of seconds that a
router’s Hello packets have not been seen before its neighbors declare
the OSPF router down.

OSPF requires these intervals to be exactly the same between two neigh-
bors. If any of these intervals are different, these routers will not
become neighbors on a particular segment. The router interface commands
used to set these timers are:

ip ospf hello-interval seconds

ip ospf dead-interval seconds

4- Stub area flag: Two routers have to also agree on the stub area flag
in the Hello packets in order to become neighbors. Stub areas will be
discussed in a later section. Keep in mind for now that defining stub
areas will affect the neighbor election process.

10.0 Adjacencies
An adjacency is the next step after the neighboring process. Adjacent
routers are routers who go beyond the simple Hello exchange and proceed
into the database exchange process. In order to minimize the amount of
information exchange on a particular segment, OSPF elects one router to
be a designated router (DR), and one router to be a backup designated
router (BDR) on each multi-access segment. The BDR is elected as a backup
mechanism in case the DR goes down. The idea behind this is that routers
have a central point of contact for information exchange. Instead of each
router exchanging updates with every other router on the segment, every
router will exchange the information with the DR and BDR. The DR and BDR
will relay the information to everybody else. In mathematical terms this
would cut the information exchange from O(n*n) to O(n) where n is the
number of routers on a multi-access segment. The following router model
will illustrate the DR and BDR:

DR
BDR

In the above diagram, all routers share a common multi-access segment.
Due to the exchange of Hello packets, one router is elected DR and


another is elected BDR. Each router on the segment (which already became
a neighbor) will try to establish an adjacency with the DR and BDR.

10.1 DR Election
DR and BDR election is done via the Hello protocol. Hello packets are
exchanged via IP multicast packets (Appendix B) on each segment. The
router with the highest OSPF priority on a segment will become the DR for
that segment. The same process is repeated for the BDR. In case of a tie,
the router with the highest RID will win. The default for the interface
OSPF priority is one. Remember that the DR and BDR concepts are per mul-
tiaccess segment. Setting the ospf priority on an interface is done using
the following interface command:

ip ospf priority <value>

A priority value of zero indicates an interface which is not to be
elected as DR or BDR. The state of the interface with priority zero will
be DROTHER. The following diagram illustrates the DR election:

RTA RID: 3.3.3.3
P=1 DR
P=1
RTB
RID:4.4.4.4
DR
P=1
P=2

RTC RID:2.2.2.2

In the above diagram, RTA and RTB have the same interface priority but
RTB has a higher RID. RTB would be DR on that segment. RTC has a higher
priority than RTB. RTC is DR on that segment.

10.2 Building the Adjacency
The adjacency building process takes effect after multiple stages have
been fulfilled. Routers that become adjacent will have the exact link-
state database. The following is a brief summary of the states an inter-
face passes through before becoming adjacent to another router:

1- Down: No information has been received from anybody on the segment.

1’- Attempt: On non-broadcast multi-access clouds such as Frame Relay and
X.25, this state indicates that no recent information has been received
from the neighbor. An effort should be made to contact the neighbor by
sending Hello packets at the reduced rate PollInterval.

2- Init: The interface has detected a Hello packet coming from a neighbor
but bi-directional communication has not yet been established.


3- Two-way: There is bi-directional communication with a neighbor. The
router has seen itself in the Hello packets coming from a neighbor. At
the end of this stage the DR and BDR election would have been done. At
the end of the 2way stage, routers will decide whether to proceed in
building an adjacency or not. The decision is based on whether one of the
routers is a DR or BDR or the link is a point-to-point or a virtual link.

4- Exstart: Routers are trying to establish the initial sequence number
that is going to be used in the information exchange packets. The
sequence number insures that routers always get the most recent informa-
tion. One router will become the primary and the other will become sec-
ondary. The primary router will poll the secondary for information.

5- Exchange: Routers will describe their entire link-state database by
sending database description packets. At this state, packets could be
flooded to other interfaces on the router.

6- Loading: At this state, routers are finalizing the information
exchange. Routers have built a link-state request list and a link-state
retransmission list. Any information that looks incomplete or outdated
will be put on the request list. Any update that is sent will be put on
the retransmission list until it gets acknowledged.

7- Full: At this state, the adjacency is complete. The neighboring rout-
ers are fully adjacent. Adjacent routers will have a similar link-state
database.

Example:

Area 0.0.0.0

RTB RTD
14.3 14.4

Area 1
L0: E0 RTF
203.250.13.41 203.250.14.1
RTA 203.250.14.2

RTA, RTB, RTD, and RTF share a common segment (E0) in area 0.0.0.0. The
following are the configs of RTA and RTF. RTB and RTD should have a sim-
ilar configuration to RTF and will not be included.


RTA#
hostname RTA

interface Loopback0
ip address 203.250.13.41 255.255.255.0

interface Ethernet0
ip address 203.250.14.1 255.255.255.0

router ospf 10
network 203.250.13.1 0.0.0.0 area 1
network 203.250.0.0 0.0.255.255 area 0.0.0.0

RTF#
hostname RTF
interface Ethernet0
ip address 203.250.14.2 255.255.255.0

router ospf 10
network 203.250.0.0 0.0.255.255 area 0.0.0.0

The above is a simple example that demonstrates a couple of commands that
are very useful in debugging OSPF networks.

sh ip ospf interface <interface>

This command is a quick check to see if all of the interfaces belong to
the areas they are supposed to be in. The sequence in which the OSPF net-
work commands are listed is very important. In RTA’s configuration, if
the “network 203.250.0.0 0.0.255.255 area 0.0.0.0” statement was put
before the “network 203.250.13.41 0.0.0.0 area 1” statement, all of the
interfaces would be in area 0, which is incorrect because the loopback is
in area 1. Let us look at the command’s output on RTA, RTF, RTB, and RTD:

RTA#sh ip ospf interface e 0
Ethernet0 is up, line protocol is up
Internet Address 203.250.14.1 255.255.255.0, Area 0.0.0.0
Process ID 10, Router ID 203.250.13.41, Network Type BROADCAST, Cost:
10
Transmit Delay is 1 sec, State BDR, Priority 1
Designated Router (ID) 203.250.15.1, Interface address 203.250.14.2
Backup Designated router (ID) 203.250.13.41, Interface address
203.250.14.1
Timer intervals configured, Hello 10, Dead 40, Wait 40, Retransmit 5
Hello due in 0:00:02
Neighbor Count is 3, Adjacent neighbor count is 3
Adjacent with neighbor 203.250.15.1 (Designated Router)
Loopback0 is up, line protocol is up
Internet Address 203.250.13.41 255.255.255.255, Area 1
Process ID 10, Router ID 203.250.13.41, Network Type LOOPBACK, Cost: 1
Loopback interface is treated as a stub Host

RTF#sh ip o int e 0


Process ID 10, Router ID 203.250.15.1, Network Type BROADCAST, Cost: 10
Transmit Delay is 1 sec, State DR, Priority 1
203.250.14.1
Adjacent with neighbor 203.250.13.41 (Backup Designated Router)

RTD#sh ip ospf interface e 0
Process ID 10, Router ID 192.208.10.174, Network Type BROADCAST, Cost:
10
Transmit Delay is 1 sec, State DROTHER, Priority 1
203.250.14.1

RTB#sh ip o int e 0
Process ID 10, Router ID 203.250.12.1, Network Type BROADCAST, Cost: 10
Transmit Delay is 1 sec, State DROTHER, Priority 1
203.250.14.1

The above output shows very important information. Let us look at RTA’s
output. Ethernet0 is in area 0.0.0.0. The process ID is 10 (router ospf
10) and the router ID is 203.250.13.41. Remember that the RID is the
highest IP address on the box or the loopback interface, calculated at
boot time or whenever the OSPF process is restarted. The state of the
interface is BDR. Since all routers have the same OSPF priority on Ether-
net 0 (default is 1), RTF’s interface was elected as DR because of the
higher RID. In the same way, RTA was elected as BDR. RTD and RTB are nei-
ther a DR or BDR and their state is DROTHER.


Also note the neighbor count and the adjacent count. RTD has three neigh-
bors and is adjacent to two of them, the DR and the BDR. RTF has three
neighbors and is adjacent to all of them because it is the DR.

The information about the network type is important and will determine
the state of the interface. On broadcast networks such as Ethernet, the
election of the DR and BDR should be irrelevant to the end user. It
should not matter who the DR or BDR are. In other cases, such as NBMA
media such as Frame Relay and X.25, this becomes very important for OSPF
to function correctly. Fortunately, with the introduction of point-to-
point and point-to-multipoint subinterfaces, DR election is no longer an
issue. OSPF over NBMA will be discussed in the next section.

Another command we need to look at is:

sh ip ospf neighbor

Let us look at RTD’s output:

RTD#sh ip o n

Neighbor ID Pri State Dead Time Address Interface

203.250.12.1 1 2WAY/DROTHER 0:00:37 203.250.14.3 Ethernet0
203.250.15.1 1 FULL/DR 0:00:36 203.250.14.2 Ethernet0
203.250.13.41 1 FULL/BDR 0:00:34 203.250.14.1 Ethernet0

The ip ospf neighbor command shows the state of all the neighbors on a
particular segment. Do not be alarmed if the “Neighbor ID” does not
belong to the segment you are looking at. In our case 203.250.12.1 and
103.250.15.1 are not on Ethernet0. This is “OK” because the “Neighbor ID”
is actually the RID which could be any IP address on the box. RTD and RTB
are just neighbors, that is why the state is 2WAY/DROTHER. RTD is adja-
cent to RTA and RTF and the state is FULL/DR and FULL/BDR.

10.3 Adjacencies on point-to-point interfaces
OSPF will always form an adjacency with the neighbor on the other side of
a point-to-point interface such as point-to-point serial lines. There is
no concept of DR or BDR. The state of the serial interfaces is point to
point.

10.4 Adjacencies on Non-Broadcast Multi-Access (NBMA)
Special care should be taken when configuring OSPF over multi-access non-
broadcast medias such as Frame Relay, X.25, ATM. The protocol considers
these media like any other broadcast media such as Ethernet. NBMA clouds
are usually built in a hub and spoke topology. PVCs or SVCs are laid out
in a partial mesh and the physical topology does not provide the multi


access that OSPF believes is out there. The selection of the DR becomes
an issue because the DR and BDR need to have full physical connectivity
with all routers that exist on the cloud. Also, because of the lack of
broadcast capabilities, the DR and BDR need to have a static list of all
other routers attached to the cloud. This is achieved using the neighbor
command:

neighbor ip-address [priority number] [poll-interval seconds]

where the “ip-address” and “priority” are the IP address and the OSPF
priority given to the neighbor. A neighbor with priority 0 is considered
ineligible for DR election. The “poll-interval” is the amount of time an
NBMA interface waits before polling (sending a Hello) to a presumably
dead neighbor. The neighbor command applies to routers with a potential
of being DRs or BDRs (interface priority not equal to 0). The following
diagram shows a network diagram where DR selection is very important:

RTA

DR
RTC

RTB

RTD

In the above diagram, it is essential for RTA’s interface to the cloud to
be elected DR. This is because RTA is the only router that has full con-
nectivity to other routers. The election of the DR could be influenced by
setting the ospf priority on the interfaces. Routers that do not need to
become DRs or BDRs will have a priority of 0 other routers could have a
lower priority.

I will not dwell too much on the use of the “neighbor” command as this is
becoming obsolete with the introduction of new means of setting the
interface Network Type to whatever we want irrespective of what the
underlying physical media is. This is explained in the following section.

11.0 Avoiding DRs and “neighbor” command on NBMA

Different methods can be used to avoid the complications of configuring
static neighbors and having specific routers becoming DRs or BDRs on the
non-broadcast cloud. Specifying which method to use is influenced by
whether we are starting the network from scratch or rectifying an already
existing design.


11.1 Point-to-point subinterfaces
A subinterface is a logical way of defining an interface. The same phys-
ical interface can be split into multiple logical interfaces, with each
subinterface being defined as point-to-point. This was originally cre-
ated in order to better handle issues caused by split horizon over NBMA
and vector based routing protocols.

A point-to-point subinterface has the properties of any physical point-
to-point interface. As far as OSPF is concerned, an adjacency is always
formed over a point-to-point subinterface with no DR or BDR election. The
following is an illustration of point-to-point subinterfaces:

RTB
Area1 Area0
1.1 123.212.
RTA 128.213.
S0.1 @20
63.6 63.5
@40
S0.2 @30
64.6 RTD

64.5 RTC
@50

In the above diagram, on RTA, we can split Serial 0 into two point-to-
point subinterfaces, S0.1 and S0.2. This way, OSPF will consider the
cloud as a set of point-to-point links rather than one multi-access net-
work. The only drawback for the point-to-point is that each segment will
belong to a different subnet. This might not be acceptable since some
administrators have already assigned one IP subnet for the whole cloud.

Another workaround is to use IP unnumbered interfaces on the cloud. This
also might be a problem for some administrators who manage the WAN based
on IP addresses of the serial lines. The following is a typical configu-
ration for RTA and RTB:

RTA#

interface Serial 0
no ip address
encapsulation frame-relay

interface Serial0.1 point-to-point
ip address 128.213.63.6 255.255.252.0
frame-relay interface-dlci 20



ip address 128.213.64.6 255.255.252.0

router ospf 10
network 128.213.0.0 0.0.255.255 area 1

RTB#

interface Serial 0
no ip address

ip address 128.213.63.5 255.255.252.0

interface Serial1
ip address 123.212.1.1 255.255.255.0

router ospf 10
network 128.213.0.0 0.0.255.255 area 1
network 123.212.0.0 0.0.255.255 area 0

11.2 Selecting Interface Network Types
The command used to set the network type of an OSPF interface is:

ip ospf network {broadcast | non-broadcast | point-to-multipoint}

11.2.1 Point-to-multipoint interfaces
An OSPF point-to-multipoint interface is defined as a numbered point-to-
point interface having one or more neighbors. This concept takes the pre-
viously discussed point-to-point concept one step further. Administra-
tors do not have to worry about having multiple subnets for each point-
to-point link. The cloud is configured as one subnet. This should work
well for people who are migrating into the point-to-point concept with no
change in IP addressing on the cloud. Also, they would not have to worry
about DRs and neighbor statements. OSPF point-to-multipoint works by
exchanging additional link-state updates that contain a number of infor-
mation elements that describe connectivity to the neighboring routers.


RTB
Area1 Area0
1.1 123.212.
RTA 128.213.
S0 S1
S0 @20 10.1 10.2
@40
@30 RTD

10.3 RTC
@50

RTA#

interface Loopback0
ip address 200.200.10.1 255.255.255.0

interface Serial0
ip address 128.213.10.1 255.255.252.0
ip ospf network point-to-multipoint

router ospf 10
network 128.213.0.0 0.0.255.255 area 1

RTB#

interface Serial0
ip address 128.213.10.2 255.255.255.0
ip ospf network point-to-multipoint

interface Serial1
ip address 123.212.1.1 255.255.255.0

router ospf 10
network 128.213.0.0 0.0.255.255 area 1
network 123.212.0.0 0.0.255.255 area 0

Note that no static frame relay map statements were configured; this is
because Inverse ARP takes care of the DLCI to IP address mapping. Let us
look at some of sh ip o int and sh ip o route outputs:


RTA#sh ip o int s0
Serial0 is up, line protocol is up
Process ID 10, Router ID 200.200.10.1, Network Type
POINT_TO_MULTIPOINT, Cost: 64
Transmit Delay is 1 sec, State POINT_TO_MULTIPOINT,
Adjacent with neighbor 195.211.10.174

RTA#sh ip o n

128.213.10.3 1 FULL/ - 0:01:35 128.213.10.3 Serial0
128.213.10.2 1 FULL/ - 0:01:44 128.213.10.2 Serial0

RTB#sh ip o int s0

Serial0 is up, line protocol is up
Process ID 10, Router ID 128.213.10.2, Network Type
POINT_TO_MULTIPOINT, Cost: 64
Transmit Delay is 1 sec, State POINT_TO_MULTIPOINT,

RTB#sh ip o n

200.200.10.1 1 FULL/ - 0:01:52 128.213.10.1 Serial0

The only drawback for point-to-multipoint is that it generates multiple
Hosts routes (routes with mask 255.255.255.255) for all the neighbors.
Note the Host routes in the following IP routing table for RTB:

RTB#sh ip rou
Codes: C - connected, S - static, I - IGRP, R - RIP, M - mobile, B - BGP
D - EIGRP, EX - EIGRP external, O - OSPF, IA - OSPF inter area
E1 - OSPF external type 1, E2 - OSPF external type 2, E - EGP


i - IS-IS, L1 - IS-IS level-1, L2 - IS-IS level-2, * - candidate
default

Gateway of last resort is not set

200.200.10.0 255.255.255.255 is subnetted, 1 subnets
O 200.200.10.1 [110/65] via 128.213.10.1, Serial0
128.213.0.0 is variably subnetted, 3 subnets, 2 masks
O 128.213.10.3 255.255.255.255
[110/128] via 128.213.10.1, 00:00:00, Serial0
O 128.213.10.1 255.255.255.255
[110/64] via 128.213.10.1, 00:00:00, Serial0
C 128.213.10.0 255.255.255.0 is directly connected, Serial0
C 123.212.1.0 is directly connected, Serial1

RTC#sh ip route

O 200.200.10.1 [110/65] via 128.213.10.1, Serial1
O 128.213.10.2 255.255.255.255 [110/128] via 128.213.10.1,Serial1
O 128.213.10.1 255.255.255.255 [110/64] via 128.213.10.1, Serial1
O 123.212.1.0 [110/192] via 128.213.10.1, 00:14:29, Serial1

Note that in RTC’s IP routing table, network 123.212.1.0 is reachable via
next hop 128.213.10.1 and not via 128.213.10.2 as you normally see over
Frame Relay clouds sharing the same subnet. This is one advantage of the
point-to-multipoint configuration because you do not need to resort to
static mapping on RTC to be able to reach next hop 128.213.10.2.

11.2.2 Broadcast interfaces

This approach is a workaround for using the “neighbor” command which
statically lists all existing neighbors. The interface will be logically
set to broadcast and will behave as if the router were connected to a
LAN. DR and BDR election will still be performed so special care should
be taken to assure either a full mesh topology or a static selection of
the DR based on the interface priority. The command that sets the inter-
face to broadcast is:

ip ospf network broadcast


12.0 OSPF and Route Summarization
Summarizing is the consolidation of multiple routes into one single
advertisement. This is normally done at the boundaries of Area Border
Routers. Although summarization could be configured between any two
areas, it is better to summarize in the direction of the backbone. This
way the backbone receives all the aggregate addresses and in turn will
injects them, already summarized, into other areas. There are two types
of summarization:

1- Inter-area route summarization

2- External route summarization

12.1 Inter-area route summarization
Inter-area route summarization is done on ABRs and it applies to routes
from within the AS. It does not apply to external routes injected into
OSPF via redistribution. In order to take advantage of summarization,
network numbers in areas should be assigned in a contiguous way to be
able to lump these addresses into one range. To specify an address range,
perform the following task in router configuration mode:

area area-id range address mask

Where the “area-id” is the area containing networks to be summarized. The
“address” and “mask” will specify the range of addresses to be summarized
in one range. The following is an example of summarization:

Area 1 Area 0
RTA
Area 2

RTB RTC RTD
128.213.64-95
255.255.255.0 128.213.96-127
255.255.255.0

128.213.96.0 255.255.224.0

128.213.64.0 255.255.224.0

In the above diagram, RTB is summarizing the range of subnets from
128.213.64.0 to 128.213.95.0 into one range: 128.213.64.0 255.255.224.0.
This is achieved by masking the first three left most bits of 64 using a
mask of 255.255.244.0. In the same way, RTC is generating the summary
address 128.213.96.0 255.255.224.0 into the backbone. Note that this


summarization was successful because we have two distinct ranges of sub-
nets, 64-95 and 96-127.

It would be hard to summarize if the subnets between area 1 and area 2
were overlapping. The backbone area would receive summary ranges that
overlap and routers in the middle would not know where to send the traf-
fic based on the summary address.

The following is the relative configuration of RTB:

RTB#
router ospf 100
area 1 range 128.213.64.0 255.255.224.0

12.2 External route summarization

External route summarization is specific to external routes that are
injected into OSPF via redistribution. Also, make sure that external
ranges that are being summarized are contiguous. Summarization overlap-
ping ranges from two different routers could cause packets to be sent to
the wrong destination. Summarization is done via the following “router
ospf” subcommand:

summary-address ip-address mask

This command is effective only on ASBRs doing redistribution into OSPF.

Area 1 Area 0
RTA

RTB RTC

RTD
BGP
BGP
128.213.64-95
255.255.255.0
128.213.96-127
255.255.255.0

In the above diagram, RTA and RTD are injecting external routes into OSPF
by redistribution. RTA is injecting subnets in the range 128.213.64-95
and RTD is injecting subnets in the range 128.213.96-127. In order to


summarize the subnets into one range on each router we can do the follow-
ing:

RTA#
router ospf 100
summary-address 128.213.64.0 255.255.224.0
redistribute bgp 50 metric 1000 subnets

RTD#
router ospf 100
summary-address 128.213.96.0 255.255.224.0
redistribute bgp 20 metric 1000 subnets

This will cause RTA to generate one external route 128.213.64.0
255.255.224.0 and will cause RTD to generate 128.213.96.0 255.255.224.0.

Note that the summary-address command has no effect if used on RTB
because RTB is not doing the redistribution into OSPF.

13.0 Stub Areas

OSPF allows certain areas to be configured as stub areas. External net-
works, such as those redistributed from other protocols into OSPF, are
not allowed to be flooded into a stub area. Routing from these areas to
the outside world is based on a default route. Configuring a stub area
reduces the topological database size inside an area and reduces the mem-
ory requirements of routers inside that area.

An area could be qualified a stub when there is a single exit point from
that area or if routing to outside of the area does not have to take an
optimal path. The latter description is just an indication that a stub
area that has multiple exit points, will have one or more area border
routers injecting a default into that area. Routing to the outside world
could take a sub-optimal path in reaching the destination by going out of
the area via an exit point which is farther to the destination than other
exit points.

Other stub area restrictions are that a stub area cannot be used as a
transit area for virtual links. Also, an ASBR cannot be internal to a
stub area. These restrictions are made because a stub area is mainly con-
figured not to carry external routes and any of the above situations
cause external links to be injected in that area. The backbone, of
course, cannot be configured as stub.

All OSPF routers inside a stub area have to be configured as stub rout-
ers. This is because whenever an area is configured as stub, all inter-
faces that belong to that area will start exchanging Hello packets with a
flag that indicates that the interface is stub. Actually this is just a


bit in the Hello packet (E bit) that gets set to 0. All routers that have
a common segment have to agree on that flag. If they don’t, then they
will not become neighbors and routing will not take effect.

An extension to stub areas is what is called “totally stubby areas”.
Cisco indicates this by adding a “no-summary” keyword to the stub area
configuration. A totally stubby area is one that blocks external routes
and summary routes (inter-area routes) from going into the area. This
way, intra-area routes and the default of 0.0.0.0 are the only routes
injected into that area.

The command that configures an area as stub is:

area <area-id> stub [no-summary]

and the command that configures a default-cost into an area is:

area area-id default-cost cost

If the cost is not set using the above command, a cost of 1 will be
advertised by the ABR.

Example:

Area 0 Area 2
Area 1 203.250. 203.250.
RTA 63.2 0.0.0.0
14.2 14.1
63.1 RTB 15.1 15.2
RTC RTE
128.213.

BGP Stub Area
128.213.64-95
255.255.255.0

Assume that area 2 is to be configured as a stub area. The following
example will show the routing table of RTE before and after configuring
area 2 as stub.

RTC#

interface Ethernet 0
ip address 203.250.14.1 255.255.255.0


interface Serial1
ip address 203.250.15.1 255.255.255.252

router ospf 10
network 203.250.15.0 0.0.0.255 area 2
network 203.250.14.0 0.0.0.255 area 0

RTE#sh ip route
default


O IA 203.250.14.0 [110/74] via 203.250.15.1, 00:06:31, Serial0
O E2 128.213.64.0 255.255.192.0
[110/10] via 203.250.15.1, 00:00:29, Serial0
O IA 128.213.63.0 255.255.255.252
[110/84] via 203.250.15.1, 00:03:57, Serial0
O 131.108.79.208 [110/74] via 203.250.15.1, 00:00:10, Serial0

RTE has learned the inter-area routes (O IA) 203.250.14.0 and
128.213.63.0 and it has learned the intra-area route (O) 131.108.79.208
and the external route (O E2) 128.213.64.0.

If we configure area 2 as stub, we need to do the following:

RTC#

ip address 203.250.14.1 255.255.255.0

interface Serial1
ip address 203.250.15.1 255.255.255.252

router ospf 10
network 203.250.15.0 0.0.0.255 area 2
network 203.250.14.0 0.0.0.255 area 0
area 2 stub

RTE#

interface Ethernet0
ip address 203.250.14.2 255.255.255.0

interface Ethernet1
ip address 131.108.79.209 255.255.255.240


interface Serial1
ip address 203.250.15.1 255.255.255.252
router ospf 10
network 203.250.15.0 0.0.0.255 area 2
network 203.250.14.0 0.0.0.255 area 0
network 131.108.0.0 0.0.255.255 area 2
area 2 stub

Note that the stub command is configured on RTE also, otherwise RTE will
never become a neighbor to RTC. The default cost was not set, so RTC will
advertise 0.0.0.0 to RTE with a metric of 1.

RTE#sh ip route
default

Gateway of last resort is 203.250.15.1 to network 0.0.0.0

O IA 203.250.14.0 [110/74] via 203.250.15.1, 00:26:58, Serial0
O IA 128.213.63.0 [110/84] via 203.250.15.1, 00:26:59, Serial0
O 131.108.79.208 [110/74] via 203.250.15.1, 00:26:59, Serial0
O*IA 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 [110/65] via 203.250.15.1, 00:26:59, Serial0

Note that all the routes show up except the external routes which were
replaced by a default route of 0.0.0.0. The cost of the route happened to
be 65 (64 for a T1 line + 1 advertised by RTC).

We will now configure area 2 to be totally stubby, and change the default
cost of 0.0.0.0 to 10.

RTC#

ip address 203.250.14.1 255.255.255.0

interface Serial1
ip address 203.250.15.1 255.255.255.252

router ospf 10
network 203.250.15.0 0.0.0.255 area 2
network 203.250.14.0 0.0.0.255 area 0
area 2 stub no-summary

RTE#sh ip route



default


O 131.108.79.208 [110/74] via 203.250.15.1, 00:31:27, Serial0
O*IA 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 [110/74] via 203.250.15.1, 00:00:00, Serial0

Note that the only routes that show up are the intra-area routes (O) and
the default-route 0.0.0.0. The external and inter-area routes have been
blocked. The cost of the default route is now 74 (64 for a T1 line + 10
advertised by RTC). No configuration is needed on RTE in this case. The
area is already stub, and the no-summary command does not affect the
Hello packet at all as the stub command does.

14.0 Redistributing routes into OSPF
Redistributing routes into OSPF from other routing protocols or from
static will cause these routes to become OSPF external routes. To redis-
tribute routes into OSPF, use the following command in router configura-
tion mode:

redistribute protocol [process-id] [metric value] [metric-type value]
[route-map map-tag] [subnets]

The protocol and process-id are the protocol that we are injecting into
OSPF and its process-id if it exits. The metric is the cost we are
assigning to the external route. If no metric is specified, OSPF puts a
default value of 20 when redistributing routes from all protocols except
BGP routes, which get a metric of 1. The metric-type is discussed in the
next paragraph.

The route-map is a method used to control the redistribution of routes
between routing domains. The format of a route map is:

route-map map-tag [[permit | deny] | [sequence-number]]

When redistributing routes into OSPF, only routes that are not subnetted
are redistributed if the subnets keyword is not specified.

14.1 E1 vs. E2 external routes
External routes fall under two categories, external type 1 and external
type 2. The difference between the two is in the way the cost (metric) of
the route is being calculated. The cost of a type 2 route is always the
external cost, irrespective of the interior cost to reach that route. A
type 1 cost is the addition of the external cost and the internal cost
used to reach that route. A type 2 route is always preferred over a type


1 route for the same destination. This is illustrated in the following
diagram:

Area 1 Area 0

RTB RTC
c=z
c=y
RTA

N1 (E1) c=x+y
c=x N1 (E1) c=x+y+z
c=x N2 (E2) c=x

N2 (E2) N2 (E2) c=x
N1 (E1)

As the above diagram shows, RTA is redistributing two external routes
into OSPF. N1 and N2 both have an external cost of x. The only difference
is that N1 is redistributed into OSPF with a metric-type 1 and N2 is
redistributed with a metric-type 2. If we follow the routes as they flow
from Area 1 to Area 0, the cost to reach N2 as seen from RTB or RTC will
always be x. The internal cost along the way is not considered. On the
other hand, the cost to reach N1 is incremented by the internal cost. The
cost is x+y as seen from RTB and x+y+z as seen from RTC. Type 1 routes
are preferred over type 2 routes in case two same cost routes exist to
the destination. The default is type 2.

Example:

16.16.16.0/24
203.250.
14.2
E0 S1
15.1 15.2
RTC RTE
128.213.0.0/16
S0

Suppose we added two static routes pointing to E0 on RTC: 16.16.16.0
255.255.255.0 (the /24 notation indicates a 24 bit mask starting from the
far left) and 128.213.0.0 255.255.0.0. The following shows the different


behaviors when different parameters are used in the redistribute command
on RTC:

RTC#

interface Ethernet0
ip address 203.250.14.2 255.255.255.0

interface Serial1
ip address 203.250.15.1 255.255.255.252

router ospf 10
redistribute static
network 203.250.15.0 0.0.0.255 area 2
network 203.250.14.0 0.0.0.255 area 0

ip route 16.16.16.0 255.255.255.0 Ethernet0

RTE#

interface Serial0
ip address 203.250.15.2 255.255.255.252

router ospf 10
network 203.250.15.0 0.0.0.255 area 2

The following is the output of sh ip route on RTE:

RTE#sh ip route
default


O IA 203.250.14.0 [110/74] via 203.250.15.1, 00:02:31, Serial0
O E2 128.213.0.0 [110/20] via 203.250.15.1, 00:02:32, Serial0

Note that the only external route that has appeared is 128.213.0.0,
because we did not use the “subnet” keyword. Remember that if the “sub-
net” keyword is not used, only routes that are not subnetted will be
redistributed. In our case 16.16.16.0 is a class A route that is subnet-
ted and it did not get redistributed. Since the “metric” keyword was not
used (or a “default-metric” statement under router OSPF), the cost allo-
cated to the external route is 20 (the default is 1 for bgp).
If we use the following:

redistribute static metric 50 subnets


RTE#sh ip route
default


O E2 16.16.16.0 [110/50] via 203.250.15.1, 00:00:02, Serial0
O IA 203.250.14.0 [110/74] via 203.250.15.1, 00:00:02, Serial0
O E2 128.213.0.0 [110/50] via 203.250.15.1, 00:00:02, Serial0

Note that 16.16.16.0 has shown up now and the cost to external routes is
50. Since the external routes are of type 2 (E2), the internal cost has
not been added. Suppose now, we change the type to E1:

redistribute static metric 50 metric-type 1 subnets

RTE#sh ip route
default


O E1 16.16.16.0 [110/114] via 203.250.15.1, 00:04:20, Serial0
O IA 203.250.14.0 [110/74] via 203.250.15.1, 00:09:41, Serial0
O E1 128.213.0.0 [110/114] via 203.250.15.1, 00:04:21, Serial0

Note that the type has changed to E1 and the cost has been incremented by
the internal cost of S0 which is 64, the total cost is 64+50=114.

Assume that we add a route map to RTC’s configuration, we will get the
following:

RTC#

interface Ethernet0
ip address 203.250.14.2 255.255.255.0

interface Serial1
ip address 203.250.15.1 255.255.255.252

router ospf 10
redistribute static metric 50 metric-type 1 subnets route-map STOPUPDATE


network 203.250.15.0 0.0.0.255 area 2
network 203.250.14.0 0.0.0.255 area 0


access-list 1 permit 128.213.0.0 0.0.255.255

route-map STOPUPDATE permit 10
match ip address 1

The route map above will only permit 128.213.0.0 to be redistributed into
OSPF and will deny the rest. This is why 16.16.16.0 does not show up in
RTE’s routing table anymore.

RTE#sh ip rou
default


O IA 203.250.14.0 [110/74] via 203.250.15.1, 00:00:04, Serial0
O E1 128.213.0.0 [110/114] via 203.250.15.1, 00:00:05, Serial0

15.0 Redistributing OSPF into other protocols

15.1 Use of a valid metric
Whenever you redistribute OSPF into other protocols, you have to respect
the rules of those protocols. In particular, the metric applied should
match the metric used by that protocol. For example, the RIP metric is a
hop count ranging between 1 and 16, where 1 indicates that a network is
one hop away and 16 indicates that the network is unreachable. On the
other hand IGRP and EIGRP require a metric of the form:

default-metric bandwidth delay reliability loading mtu

15.2 VLSM
Another issue to consider is VLSM (Variable Length Subnet Guide)(Appen-
dix C). OSPF can carry multiple subnet information for the same major
net, but other protocols such as RIP and IGRP (EIGRP is OK with VLSM)
cannot. If the same major net crosses the boundaries of an OSPF and RIP
domain, VLSM information redistributed into RIP or IGRP will be lost and


static routes will have to be configured in the RIP or IGRP domains. The
following example illustrates this problem:

RIP 203.250. OSPF
255.255.255. 192 203.250.
RTA 15.68 15.67 RTC 255.255.255.252
E0 S1 15.2
E0
15.1 RTE

S0

In the above diagram, RTE is running OSPF and RTA is running RIP. RTC is
doing the redistribution between the two protocols. The problem is that
the class C network 203.250.15.0 is variably subnetted, it has two dif-
ferent masks 255.255.255.252 and 255.255.255.192. Let us look at the con-
figuration and the routing tables of RTE and RTA:

RTA#

interface Ethernet0
ip address 203.250.15.68 255.255.255.192

router rip
network 203.250.15.0

RTC#

interface Ethernet0
ip address 203.250.15.67 255.255.255.192

interface Serial1
ip address 203.250.15.1 255.255.255.252

router ospf 10
redistribute rip metric 10 subnets
network 203.250.15.0 0.0.0.255 area 0

router rip
redistribute ospf 10 metric 2
network 203.250.15.0

RTE#sh ip rou


default


O 203.250.15.64 255.255.255.192
[110/74] via 203.250.15.1, 00:15:55, Serial0

RTA#sh ip route
default


C 203.250.15.64 is directly connected, Ethernet0

Note that RTE has recognized that 203.250.15.0 has two subnets while RTA
thinks that it has only one subnet (the one configured on the interface).
Information about subnet 203.250.15.0 255.255.255.252 is lost in the RIP
domain. In order to reach that subnet, a static route needs to be config-
ured on RTA:

RTA#

interface Ethernet0
ip address 203.250.15.68 255.255.255.192

router rip
network 203.250.15.0

ip route 203.250.15.0 255.255.255.0 203.250.15.67

This way RTA will be able to reach the other subnets.

15.3 Mutual Redistribution
Mutual redistribution between protocols should be done very carefully
and in a controlled manner. Incorrect configuration could lead to poten-
tial looping of routing information. A rule of thumb for mutual redistri-
bution is not to allow information learned from a protocol to be injected
back into the same protocol. Passive interfaces and distribute lists
should be applied on the redistributing routers. Filtering information
with link-state protocols such as OSPF is a tricky business. Distribute-
list out works on the ASBR to filter redistributed routes into other pro-


tocols. Distribute-list in works on any router to prevent routes from
being put in the routing table, but it does not prevent link-state pack-
ets from being propagated, downstream routers would still have the
routes. It is better to avoid OSPF filtering as much as possible if fil-
ters can be applied on the other protocols to prevent loops.

203.250.15.0 203.250.15.0
255.255.255.192 255.255.255.192
RTA 15.68 15.67 RTC
E1
E0 S1 RIP
15.194 OSPF E0 15.130
RIP 15.1 15.2

S0 E0
RTE

To illustrate, suppose RTA, RTC, and RTE are running RIP. RTC and RTA are
also running OSPF. Both RTC and RTA are doing redistribution between RIP
and OSPF. Let us assume that you do not want the RIP coming from RTE to
be injected into the OSPF domain so you put a passive interface for RIP
on E0 of RTC. However, you have allowed the RIP coming from RTA to be
injected into OSPF. Here is the outcome (DO NOT USE THE FOLLOWING CONFIG-
URATION):

RTE#

interface Ethernet0
ip address 203.250.15.130 255.255.255.192

interface Serial0
ip address 203.250.15.2 255.255.255.192

router rip
network 203.250.15.0

RTC#

interface Ethernet0
ip address 203.250.15.67 255.255.255.192

interface Serial1
ip address 203.250.15.1 255.255.255.192

router ospf 10
network 203.250.15.0 0.0.0.255 area 0

router rip
passive-interface Ethernet0


network 203.250.15.0

RTA#

interface Ethernet0
ip address 203.250.15.68 255.255.255.192

router ospf 10
network 203.250.15.0 0.0.0.255 area 0

router rip
network 203.250.15.0

RTC#sh ip rou
default


R 203.250.15.128 [120/1] via 203.250.15.68, 00:01:08, Ethernet0
[120/1] via 203.250.15.2, 00:00:11, Serial1
O 203.250.15.192 [110/20] via 203.250.15.68, 00:21:41, Ethernet0

Note that RTC has two paths to reach 203.250.15.128 subnet: Serial 1 and
Ethernet 0 (E0 is obviously the wrong path). This happened because RTC
gave that entry to RTA via OSPF and RTA gave it back via RIP because RTA
did not learn it via RIP. This example is a very small scale of loops
that can occur because of an incorrect configuration. In large networks
this situation gets even more aggravated.

In order to fix the situation in our example, you could stop RIP from
being sent on RTA’s Ethernet 0 via a passive interface. This might not be
suitable in case some routers on the Ethernet are RIP only routers. In
this case, you could allow RTC to send RIP on the Ethernet; this way RTA
will not send it back on the wire because of split horizon (this might
not work on NBMA media if split horizon is off). Split horizon does not


allow updates to be sent back on the same interface they were learned
from (via the same protocol). Another good method is to apply distribute-
lists on RTA to deny subnets learned via OSPF from being put back into
RIP on the Ethernet. The latter is the one we will be using:

RTA#

interface Ethernet0
ip address 203.250.15.68 255.255.255.192

router ospf 10
network 203.250.15.0 0.0.0.255 area 0

router rip
network 203.250.15.0
distribute-list 1 out ospf 10

And the output of RTC’s routing table would be:
RTF#sh ip route
default


R 203.250.15.128 [120/1] via 203.250.15.2, 00:00:19, Serial1
O 203.250.15.192 [110/20] via 203.250.15.68, 00:21:41, Ethernet0

16.0 Injecting defaults into OSPF

An autonomous system boundary router (ASBR) can be forced to generate a
default route into the OSPF domain. As discussed earlier, a router
becomes an ASBR whenever routes are redistributed into an OSPF domain.
However, an ASBR does not, by default, generate a default route into the
OSPF routing domain.

To have OSPF generate a default route use the following:

default-information originate [always] [metric metric-value] [metric-
type type-value] [route-map map-name]


There are two ways to generate a default. The first is to advertise
0.0.0.0 inside the domain, but only if the ASBR itself already has a
default route. The second is to advertise 0.0.0.0 regardless whether the
ASBR has a default route. The latter can be set by adding the keyword
“always”. You should be careful when using the “always” keyword. If your
router advertises a default (0.0.0.0) inside the domain and does not have
a default itself or a path to reach the destinations, routing will be
broken.

The metric and metric type are the cost and type (E1 or E2) assigned to
the default route. The route map specifies the set of conditions that
need to be satisfied in order for the default to be generated.

Example:

203.250.15.0 203.250.15.0
255.255.255.192 RTA 255.255.255.192
E1 15.68 15.67 RTC
E0 S1 RIP
15.194 OSPF E0 15.130
15.1 15.2

S0 E0
RTE

Assume that RTE is injecting a default-route 0.0.0.0 into RIP. RTC will
have a gateway of last resort of 203.250.15.2. RTC will not propagate the
default to RTA until we configure RTC with a default-information origi-
nate command.

RTC#sh ip route
default


R 203.250.15.128 [120/1] via 203.250.15.2, 00:00:17, Serial1
O 203.250.15.192 [110/20] via 203.250.15.68, 2d23, Ethernet0
R* 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 [120/1] via 203.250.15.2, 00:00:17, Serial1
[120/1] via 203.250.15.68, 00:00:32, Ethernet0
RTC#


interface Ethernet0
ip address 203.250.15.67 255.255.255.192

interface Serial1
ip address 203.250.15.1 255.255.255.192

router ospf 10
network 203.250.15.0 0.0.0.255 area 0
default-information originate metric 10

router rip
passive-interface Ethernet0
network 203.250.15.0

RTA#sh ip route

default


O 203.250.15.0 [110/74] via 203.250.15.67, 2d23, Ethernet0
O E2 203.250.15.128 [110/10] via 203.250.15.67, 2d23, Ethernet0
O*E2 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 [110/10] via 203.250.15.67, 00:00:17, Ethernet0

Note that RTA has learned 0.0.0.0 as an external route with metric 10.
The gateway of last resort is set to 203.250.15.67 as expected.

17.0 OSPF Design Tips

The OSPF RFC (1583) did not specify any guidelines for the number of
routers in an area or number the of neighbors per segment or what is the
best way to architect a network. Different people have different
approaches to designing OSPF networks. The important thing to remember is
that any protocol can fail under pressure. The idea is not to challenge
the protocol but rather to work with it in order to get the best behav-
ior. The following are a list of things to consider.


17.1 Number of routers per area
Experience has shown that 40 to 50 routers per area is the upper bound
for OSPF. That does not mean that networks with 60 or 70 routers in an
area won’t function, but why experiment with stability if you don’t need
to. One of the main problems is that administrators let their backbone
area grow too large. Try to outline the logical view of the network from
the start, and remember that it doesn’t hurt to start creating that other
area.

17.2 Number of neighbors
The number of routers connected to the same LAN is also important. Each
LAN has a DR and BDR that build adjacencies with all other routers. The
fewer neighbors that exist on the LAN, the smaller the number of adjacen-
cies a DR or BDR have to build. That depends on how much power your
router has. You could always change the OSPF priority to select your DR.
Also if possible, try to avoid having the same router be the DR on more
than one segment. If DR selection is based on the highest RID, then one
router could accidently become a DR over all segments it is connected to.
This router would be doing extra effort while other routers are idle.

More neighbors = more work for DR/BDR

DR

DR

17.3 Number of areas per ABR

ABRs will keep a copy of the database for all areas they service. If a
router is connected to five areas for example, it will have to keep a
list of five different databases. It is better not to overload an ABR,
you could always spread the areas over other routers. The ideal design is
to have each ABR connected to two areas only, the backbone and another
area with three areas being the upper limit. The following diagram shows
the difference between one ABR holding five different databases (includ-
ing area 0) and two ABRs holding three databases each. Again, these are
just guidelines, the more areas you configure per ABR the lower perfor-
mance you get. In some cases, the lower performance can be tolerated.


A2 A4
A3
A2 A1
A1
A3
A2 A3
A2 A1 A4
A1 A3

A4
A4 A0
A0

17.4 Full mesh vs. Partial Mesh
Non Broadcast Multi-Access (NBMA) clouds such as Frame Relay or X.25, are
always a challenge. The combination of low bandwidth and too many link-
states is a recipe for problems. A partial mesh topology has proven to
behave much better than a full mesh. A carefully laid out point-to-point
or point-to-multipoint network works much better than multipoint net-
works that have to deal with DR issues.

Partial Mesh
Full Mesh (Works better)
(not recommended)

17.5 Memory issues
It is not easy to figure out the memory needed for a particular OSPF con-
figuration. Memory issues usually come up when too many external routes
are injected in the OSPF domain. A backbone area with 40 routers and a
default route to the outside world would have less memory issues compared
with a backbone area with 4 routers and 33,000 external routes injected
into OSPF.


Memory could also be conserved by using a good OSPF design. Summarization
at the area border routers and use of stub areas could further minimize
the number of routes exchanged.

The total memory used by OSPF is the sum of the memory used in the rout-
ing table (sh ip route summary) and the memory used in the link-state
database. The following numbers are a “rule of thumb” estimate. Each
entry in the routing table will consume between approximately 200 and 280
bytes plus 44 bytes per extra path. Each LSA will consume a 100 byte
overhead plus the size of the actual link state advertisement, possibly
another 60 to 100 bytes (For router links, this depends on the number of
interfaces on the router). This should be added to memory used by other
processes and by the IOS itself. If you really want to know the exact
number, you can do a sh memory with and without OSPF being turned on. The
difference in the processor memory used would be the answer (keep a
backup copy of the configs).

Normally, a routing table with < 500K bytes could be accommodated with 2
to 4Meg of RAM; large networks > 500K may need 8 to 16 Meg (Maybe 32 to
64 Meg if full routes are injected from the Internet).

18.0 Summary

The OSPF protocol defined in RFC 1583, provides a high functionality open
protocol that allows multiple vendor networks to communicate using the
TCP/IP protocol family. Some of the benefits of OSPF are, fast conver-
gence, VLSM, authentication, hierarchical segmentation, route summariza-
tion, and aggregation which are needed to handle large and complicated
networks.


19.0 APPENDIX A: Link-State Database Synchronization

RTA
RTB

DOWN
Hello (DR=0, None Seen) DOWN
TWO-WAY
(Attempt on
Serial lines in
INIT Hello (DR=R1, R2 and R3 Seen)
case neighbor
is Down)

DD (Seq=y, M)
Exstart
(Master/Slave)
DD (Seq=x, M)

DD(Seq=x, S)

DD (Seq=x+1, M)
Exchange
DD (Seq=x+1, S)

.
.
.
DD (Seq=x+n,M)

DD (Seq=x+n,S)

Link State Requset
Loading

Link State Update

FULL
Link State Requset
FULL
Link State Update

In the above diagram, routers on the same segment go through a series of
states before forming a successful adjacency. The neighbor and DR elec-


tion are done via the Hello protocol. Whenever a router sees itself in
his neighbor’s Hello packet, the state transitions to “2-Way”. At that
point DR and BDR election is performed on multi-access segments. A router
continues forming an adjacency with a neighbor if either of the two rout-
ers is a DR or BDR or they are connected via a point-to-point or virtual
link.

In the Exstart state,the two neighbors form a Master/Slave relationship
where they agree on a initial sequence number. The sequence number is
used to detect old or duplicate Link-State Advertisements (LSA).

In the Exchange state, Database Description Packets (DD) will get
exchanged. These are abbreviated link-state advertisements in the form
of link-state headers. The header supplies enough information to iden-
tify a link. The master node sends DD packets which are acknowledged with
DD packets from the slave node. All adjacencies in exchange state or
greater are used by the flooding procedure. These adjacencies are fully
capable of transmitting and receiving all types of OSPF routing protocol
packets.

In the Loading state, link-state request packets are sent to neighbors,
asking for more recent advertisements that have been discovered but not
yet received. Each router builds a list of required LSAs to bring its
adjaceny up to date. A Retransmission List is maintained to make sure
that every LSA is acknowledged. To specify the number of seconds between
link-state advertisement retransmissions for the adjacency you can use:
ip ospf retransmit-interval seconds.

Link-state update packets are sent in response to request packets. The
link-state update packets will be flooded over all adjacencies.

In the Full state, the neighbor routers are fully adjacent. The databases
for a common area are an exact match between adjacent routers.

Each LSA has an age field that gets periodically incremented while it is
contained in the database or as it gets flooded throughout the area. When
an LSA reaches a Maxage it gets flushed from the database if that LSA is
not on any neighbors retransmission list.


19.1 Link-State Advertisements

Area 1

RTA Area 2
RL

NL
DR SL(3) RL
ASBR
RL
SL(3,4) RL RTD
ABR

RL EL
RTB

SL(3) SL(3,4) RTC
BGP
SL RL
Area 0

Link-state advertisements are broken into five types. Router Links (RL)
are generated by all routers. These links describe the state of the
router interfaces inside a particular area. These links are only flooded
inside the router’s area. Network Links (NL) are generated by a DR of a
particular segment; these are an indication of the routers connected to
that segment. Summary Links (SL) are the inter-area links (type 3); these
links will list the networks inside other areas but still belonging to
the autonomous system. Summary links are injected by the ABR from the
backbone into other areas and from other areas into the backbone. These
links are used for aggregation between areas. Other types of summary
links are the asbr-summary links. These are type 4 links that point to
the ASBR. This is to make sure that all routers know the way to exit the
autonomous system. The last type is type 5, External Links (EL), these
are injected by the ASBR into the domain. These links are flooded over
the whole area except into stub areas.

The above diagram illustrates the different link types. RTA generates a
router link (RL) into area 1, and it also generates a network link (NL)
since it happens the be the DR on that particular segment. RTB is an ABR,
and it generates RL into area 1 and area 0. RTB also generates summary
links into area 1 and area 0. These links are the list of networks that
are interchanged between the two areas. An ASBR summary link is also
injected by RTB into area 1. This is an indication of the existence of


RTD, the autonomous system border router. Similarly RTC, which is another
ABR, generates RL for area 0 and area 2, and a SL (3) into area 2 (since
it is not announcing any ASBR), and a SL (3,4) into area 0 announcing
RTD. RTD generates a RL for area 2 and generates an EL for external
routes learned via BGP. The external routers will be flooded all over the
domain.

The following table is a summary of the link state advertisements.

LINK STATE ADVERTISEMENTS

LS type Advertisement Description

1 Router Link advertisements. Generated by each router
for each area it belongs to. They describe the
states of the router’s link to the area. These are
only flooded within a particular area.

2 Network Link advertisements. Generated by Designated
Routers. They describe the set of routers attached
to a particular network. Flooded in the area that
contains the network.

3 or 4 Summary Link advertisements. Generated by Area Bor-
der routers. They describe inter-area (between
areas) routes. Type 3 describes routes to networks,
also used for aggregating routes. Type 4 describes
routes to ASBR.

5 AS external link advertisements. Originated by ASBR.
They describe routes to destinations external to the
AS. Flooded all over except stub areas.

If you look at the OSPF database in detail, using sh ip ospf d d, you
will see different keywords such as Link-Data, Link-ID, and Link-state
ID. These terms become confusing as the value of each depends on the link
state type and the link-type. We will go over this terminology and will
provide a detailed example on the OSPF database as seen from the router.
The Link-State ID basically defines the identity of the link-state
depending on the LS type. Router Links are identified by the router ID
(RID) of the router that originated the advertisement. Network Links are
identified by the relative IP address of the DR. This makes sense because
Network Links are originated by the Designated Router. Summary Links
(type 3)are identified by the IP network numbers of the destinations they
are pointing at. ASBR Summary Links (Summary Links type 4) are identified
by the RID of the ASBR. Finally, External Links are identified by the IP
network numbers of the external destinations they are pointing at. The
following table summarizes this information:


Link State ID
LS type (In the high level view of the database when
referencing a router this is called Link ID)

1 The originating Router’s Router ID (RID).

2 The IP interface address of the network’s Designated
Router.

3 The destination network number.

4 The router ID of the described AS boundary router.

5 The external network number.

Next, we will describe the different links available:

Stub network links: This term has nothing to do with Stub areas. A stub
segment is a segment that has one router only attached to it. An Ethernet
or Token Ring segment that has one attached router is considered a link
to a stub network. A loopback interface is also considered a link to stub
network with a 255.255.255.255 mask (Host route).

Point-to-point links: These could be physical or logical (subinterfaces)
point-to-point serial link connections. These links could be numbered
(an IP address is configured on the link) or unnumbered.

Transit links: These are interfaces connected to networks that have more
than one router attached, hence the name transit.

Virtual links: These are logical links that connect areas that do not
have physical connections to the backbone. Virtual links are treated as
numbered point-to-point links.

The link-ID is an identification of the link itself. This is different
for each link type. A transit link is identified by the IP address of the
DR on that link. A numbered point-to-point link is identified by the RID
of the neighbor router on the point-to-point link. Virtual links are
identical to point-to-point links. Finally, links to stub networks are
identified by the IP address of the interface to the stub network. The
following table summarizes this information:

Link ID
Link type
(This applies to individual Links)
Point-to-Point Neighbor Router ID

Link to transit network Interface address of DR


Link ID
Link type
(This applies to individual Links)
Link to stub network Network/subnet number
(In case of loopback mask is
255.255.255.255)

Virtual Link Neighbor Router ID

The Link Data is the IP address of the link, except for stub network were
the link data is the network mask.

Link type Link Data
Stub network Network Mask

Other networks (applies to Router’s associated IP inter-
router links only) face address

Finally, an Advertising Router is the RID of the router that has sent the
LSA.

19.2 OSPF database example

L0 203.250.13.41 203.250.15.0
255.255.255.255 255.255.255.192
203.250.15.193
Area 0
RTA RTC
E1 15.68 15.67 RIP
Area 1
E0 S1
15.194 OSPF E0 16.130
15.1 15.2

S0 E0
RTE

Given the above topology, and the following configs, and the IP route
tables, let us look at different ways of understanding the OSPF database.

RTA#
interface Loopback0
ip address 203.250.13.41 255.255.255.255


interface Ethernet0
ip address 203.250.15.68 255.255.255.192

interface Ethernet1
ip address 203.250.15.193 255.255.255.192

router ospf 10
network 203.250.0.0 0.0.255.255 area 0

RTA#sh ip route
default


O E2 203.250.16.128 [110/10] via 203.250.15.67, 00:00:50, Ethernet0
C 203.250.13.41 is directly connected, Loopback0
O IA 203.250.15.0 [110/74] via 203.250.15.67, 00:00:50, Ethernet0
O*E2 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 [110/10] via 203.250.15.67, 00:00:50, Ethernet0

RTE#
ip subnet-zero

interface Ethernet0
ip address 203.250.16.130 255.255.255.192

interface Serial0
ip address 203.250.15.2 255.255.255.192

router ospf 10
network 203.250.15.0 0.0.0.63 area 1
default-information originate metric 10

router rip
network 203.250.16.0


RTE#sh ip route


default


O IA 203.250.13.41 255.255.255.255
[110/75] via 203.250.15.1, 00:16:31, Serial0
O IA 203.250.15.64 [110/74] via 203.250.15.1, 00:16:31, Serial0
O IA 203.250.15.192 [110/84] via 203.250.15.1, 00:16:31, Serial0
S* 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 is directly connected, Ethernet0

RTC#
ip subnet-zero

interface Ethernet0
ip address 203.250.15.67 255.255.255.192

interface Serial1
ip address 203.250.15.1 255.255.255.192

router ospf 10
network 203.250.15.64 0.0.0.63 area 0
network 203.250.15.0 0.0.0.63 area 1

RTF#sh ip route
default


O E2 203.250.16.128 [110/10] via 203.250.15.2, 04:49:05, Serial1
O 203.250.13.41 [110/11] via 203.250.15.68, 04:49:06, Ethernet0
O 203.250.15.192 [110/20] via 203.250.15.68, 04:49:06, Ethernet0
O*E2 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 [110/10] via 203.250.15.2, 04:49:06, Serial1


19.2.1 General view of the database

RTC#sh ip ospf database

OSPF Router with ID (203.250.15.67) (Process ID 10)

Router Link States (Area 1)

Link ID ADV Router Age Seq# Checksum Link count
203.250.15.67 203.250.15.67 48 0x80000008 0xB112 2
203.250.16.130 203.250.16.130 212 0x80000006 0x3F44 2

Summary Net Link States (Area 1)

Link ID ADV Router Age Seq# Checksum
203.250.13.41 203.250.15.67 602 0x80000002 0x90AA
203.250.15.64 203.250.15.67 620 0x800000E9 0x3E3C
203.250.15.192 203.250.15.67 638 0x800000E5 0xA54E


203.250.13.41 203.250.13.41 179 0x80000029 0x9ADA 3
203.250.15.67 203.250.15.67 675 0x800001E2 0xDD23 1

Net Link States (Area 0)

203.250.15.68 203.250.13.41 334 0x80000001 0xB6B5


203.250.15.0 203.250.15.67 792 0x80000002 0xAEBD

Summary ASB Link States (Area 0)

203.250.16.130 203.250.15.67 579 0x80000001 0xF9AF

AS External Link States

Link ID ADV Router Age Seq# Checksum Tag
0.0.0.0 203.250.16.130 1787 0x80000001 0x98CE 10
203.250.16.128 203.250.16.130 5 0x80000002 0x93C4 0

This is a general look at the whole OSPF database. The database is listed
according to the areas. In this case, we are looking at RTC’s database
which is an ABR. Both area 1 and area 0’s databases are listed. Area 1 is
composed of router links and summary links. No network links exist
because no DR exists on any of the segments in area 1. No Summary ASBR
links exist in area 1 because the only ASBR happens to be in area 0.
External links do not belong to any particular area as they are flooded
all over. Note that all the links are the cumulative links collected from


all routers in an area.

We will mainly concentrate on the database in area 0. The Link-ID indi-
cated here is actually the Link-State ID. This is a representation of the
whole router, not a particular link. This is a bit confusing, but just
remember that this high level Link-ID (should be Link-State ID) repre-
sents the whole router and not just a link.

19.2.2 Router Links


203.250.13.41 203.250.13.41 179 0x80000029 0x9ADA 3
203.250.15.67 203.250.15.67 675 0x800001E2 0xDD23 1

We will start with the router links. There are two entries listed for
203.250.13.41 and 203.250.15.67, these are the RIDs of the two routers in
area 0. The number of links in area 0 for each router is also indicated.
RTA has three links to area 0 and RTC has one link. A detailed view of
RTC’s router links follows:

RTC#sh ip ospf database router 203.250.15.67



LS age: 1169
Options: (No TOS-capability)
LS Type: Router Links
Link State ID: 203.250.15.67
Advertising Router: 203.250.15.67
LS Seq Number: 80000008
Checksum: 0xB112
Length: 48
Area Border Router
Number of Links: 2

Link connected to: another Router (point-to-point)
(Link ID) Neighboring Router ID: 203.250.16.130
(Link Data) Router Interface address: 203.250.15.1
Number of TOS metrics: 0
TOS 0 Metrics: 64

Link connected to: a Stub Network
(Link ID) Network/subnet number: 203.250.15.0
(Link Data) Network Mask: 255.255.255.192
TOS 0 Metrics: 64

One thing to note here is that OSPF generates an extra stub link for each


point-to-point interface. Do not get confused if you see the link count
larger than the number of physical interfaces.


LS age: 1227
Link State ID: 203.250.15.67
Checksum: 0xA041
Length: 36
Area Border Router
Number of Links: 1

Link connected to: a Transit Network
(Link ID) Designated Router address: 203.250.15.68
TOS 0 Metrics: 10

Note that the Link ID is equal to the IP address (not the RID) of the
attached DR; in this case it is 203.250.15.68. The Link Data is RTC’s own
IP address.

19.2.3 Network Links


203.250.15.68 203.250.13.41 334 0x80000001 0xB6B5

One network Link is listed, indicated by the interface IP address (not
the RID) of the DR, in this case 203.250.15.68. A detailed view of this
entry follows:

RTC#sh ip ospf database network



Routing Bit Set on this LSA
LS age: 1549
LS Type: Network Links
Link State ID: 203.250.15.68 (address of Designated Router)
Checksum: 0xB4B6
Length: 32
Network Mask: 255.255.255.192


Attached Router: 203.250.13.41

Note that the network link lists the RIDs of the routers attached to the
transit network; in this case the RIDs of RTA and RTC are listed.

19.2.4 Summary Links


203.250.15.0 203.250.15.67 792 0x80000002 0xAEBD

Area 0 has one summary link represented by the IP network address of the
link 203.250.15.0. This link was injected by the ABR RTC from area 1 into
area 0. A detailed view of this summary link follows, summary links for
area 1 are not listed here:

RTC#sh ip ospf database summary (area 1 is not listed)


LS age: 615
LS Type: Summary Links(Network)
Link State ID: 203.250.15.0 (summary Network Number)
Checksum: 0xACBE
Length: 28
Network Mask: 255.255.255.192 TOS: 0 Metric: 64

19.2.5 Summary ASBR Links


203.250.16.130 203.250.15.67 579 0x80000001 0xF9AF

This is an indication of who the ASBR is. In this case the ASBR is RTE
represented by its RID 203.250.16.130. The advertising router for this
entry into area 0 is RTC with RID 203.250.15.67. A detailed view of the
summary ASBR entry follows:

RTC#sh ip ospf database asbr-summary




LS age: 802
LS Type: Summary Links(AS Boundary Router)
Link State ID: 203.250.16.130 (AS Boundary Router address)
Checksum: 0xF5B1
Length: 28

19.2.6 External Links

Link ID ADV Router Age Seq# Checksum Tag
0.0.0.0 203.250.16.130 1787 0x80000001 0x98CE 10
203.250.16.128 203.250.16.130 5 0x80000002 0x93C4 0

We have two external Links, the first one is the 0.0.0.0 injected into
OSPF via the default-information originate command. The other entry is
network 203.250.16.128 which is injected into OSPF by redistribution.
The router advertising these networks is 203.250.16.130, the RID of RTE.
The following is the detailed view of the external routes:

RTC#sh ip o database external



LS age: 208
LS Type: AS External Link
Link State ID: 0.0.0.0 (External Network Number )
Checksum: 0x96CF
Length: 36
Network Mask: 0.0.0.0
Metric Type: 2 (Larger than any link state path)
TOS: 0
Metric: 10
Forward Address: 0.0.0.0
External Route Tag: 10

LS age: 226


Link State ID: 203.250.16.128 (External Network Number )
Checksum: 0x93C4
Length: 36
Network Mask: 255.255.255.192
TOS: 0
Metric: 10

Please note the forward address. Whenever this address is 0.0.0.0 it
indicates that the external routes are reachable via the advertising
router, in this case 203.250.16.130. This is why the identity of the ASBR
is injected by ABRs into other areas using ASBR summary links.
This forward address is not always 0.0.0.0. In some cases, it could be
the IP address of another router on the same segment. The following dia-
gram will illustrate this situation:

RTB 125.211.0.0
BGP
1.2
1.1 1.4

RTA OSPF
1.3
RTC

In the above situation RTB, is running BGP with RTA, and OSPF with the
rest of the domain. RTA is not running OSPF. RTB is redistributing BGP
routes into OSPF. According to OSPF, RTB is an ASBR advertising external
routes. The forwarding address in this case is set to 125.211.1.1 and not
to the advertising router (0.0.0.0) RTB. This makes sense because there
is no need to make the extra hop. An important thing to remember is that
routers inside the OSPF domain should be able to reach the forwarding
address via OSPF in order for the external routes to be put in the IP
routing table. If the forwarding address is reached via some other pro-
tocol or not accessible, the external entries would be in the database
but not in the IP routing table.

Another situation would arise if both RTB and RTC are ASBRs (RTC is also
running BGP with RTA). In this situation, in order to eliminate the
duplication of the effort, one of the two routers will not advertise
(will flush) the external routes. The router with the higher RID will
win.


19.2.7 The Full Database

Finally, this is a listing of the whole database as an exercise. You
should now be able to go over each entry and explain what is going on:

RTC#sh ip ospf database router



LS age: 926
Link State ID: 203.250.15.67
Checksum: 0x573F
Length: 48
Area Border Router
Number of Links: 2

TOS 0 Metrics: 64

TOS 0 Metrics: 64

LS age: 958
Link State ID: 203.250.16.130
Checksum: 0xDA76
Length: 48
AS Boundary Router
Number of Links: 2

TOS 0 Metrics: 64


TOS 0 Metrics: 64


LS age: 1107
Link State ID: 203.250.13.41
LS Seq Number: 8000002A
Checksum: 0xC0B0
Length: 60
AS Boundary Router
Number of Links: 3

TOS 0 Metrics: 1

TOS 0 Metrics: 10

TOS 0 Metrics: 10

LS age: 1575
Link State ID: 203.250.15.67
Checksum: 0x5666
Length: 36
Area Border Router
Number of Links: 1


TOS 0 Metrics: 10

RTC#sh ip ospf database network



LS age: 1725
LS Type: Network Links
Link State ID: 203.250.15.68 (address of Designated Router)
Checksum: 0x6CDA
Length: 32
Network Mask: 255.255.255.192

RTC#sh ip ospf database summary



LS age: 8
Checksum: 0x42D1
Length: 28

LS age: 26


Checksum: 0xB182
Length: 28

LS age: 47
Checksum: 0x1F91
Length: 28


LS age: 66
Checksum: 0x68E0
Length: 28

RTC#sh ip ospf asbr-summary



LS age: 576
LS Type: Summary Links(AS Boundary Router)
Link State ID: 203.250.16.130 (AS Boundary Router address)
Checksum: 0xB3D2
Length: 28

RTC#sh ip ospf database external




LS age: 305
Link State ID: 0.0.0.0 (External Network Number)
Checksum: 0x98CE
Length: 36
Network Mask: 0.0.0.0
TOS: 0
Metric: 10

LS age: 653
Link State ID: 203.250.16.128 (External Network Number)
Checksum: 0x4FE6
Length: 36
Network Mask: 255.255.255.192
TOS: 0
Metric: 10


20.0 APPENDIX B: OSPF and IP Multicast Addressing

OSPF used IP multicast to exchange Hello packets and Link State Updates.
An IP multicast address is implemented using class D addresses. A class D
address ranges from 224.0.0.0 to 239.255.255.255.

Class D addressing
0 31

1 1 1 0

Some special IP multicast addresses are reserved for OSPF:

224.0.0.5: All OSPF routers should be able to transmit and listen to this
address.

224.0.0.6: All DR and BDR routers should be able to transmit and listen
to this address.

The mapping between IP multicast addresses and MAC addresses has the fol-
lowing rule:

For multiaccess networks that support multicast, the low order 23 bits of
the IP address are used as the low order bits of the MAC multicast
address 01-005E-00-00-00.

Example:

224.0.0.5 would be mapped to 01-00-5E-00-00-05 and
224.0.0.6 would be mapped to 01-00-5E-00-00-06.

OSPF uses broadcast on Token Ring networks.


21.0 APPENDIX C: Variable Length Subnet Masks (VLSM)

TABLE 1. Binary/Decimal Conversion Chart

0000 0001 0010 0011 0100 0101 0110 0111
0 0000 16 0000 32 0000 48 0000 64 0000 80 0000 96 0000 112 0000
1 0001 17 0001 33 0001 49 0001 65 0001 81 0001 97 0001 113 0001
2 0010 18 0010 34 0010 50 0010 66 0010 82 0010 98 0010 114 0010
3 0011 19 0011 35 0011 51 0011 67 0011 83 0011 99 0011 115 0011
4 0100 20 0100 36 0100 52 0100 68 0100 84 0100 100 0100 116 0100
5 0101 21 0101 37 0101 53 0101 69 0101 85 0101 101 0101 117 0101
6 0110 22 0110 38 0110 54 0110 70 0110 86 0110 102 0110 118 0110
7 0111 23 0111 39 0111 55 0111 71 0111 87 0111 103 0111 119 0111
8 1000 24 1000 40 1000 56 1000 72 1000 88 1000 104 1000 120 1000
9 1001 25 1001 41 1001 57 1001 73 1001 89 1001 105 1001 121 1001
10 1010 26 1010 42 1010 58 1010 74 1010 90 1010 106 1010 122 1010
11 1011 27 1011 43 1011 59 1011 75 1011 91 1011 107 1011 123 1011
12 1100 28 1100 44 1100 60 1100 76 1100 92 1100 108 1100 124 1100
13 1101 29 1101 45 1101 61 1101 77 1101 93 1101 109 1101 125 1101
14 1110 30 1110 46 1110 62 1110 78 1110 94 1110 110 1110 126 1110
15 1111 31 1111 47 1111 63 1111 79 1111 95 1111 111 1111 127 1111
1000 1001 1010 1011 1100 1101 1110 1111
128 0000 144 0000 160 0000 176 0000 192 0000 208 0000 224 0000 240 0000
129 0001 145 0001 161 0001 177 0001 193 0001 209 0001 225 0001 241 0001
130 0010 146 0010 162 0010 178 0010 194 0010 210 0010 226 0010 242 0010
131 0011 147 0011 163 0011 179 0011 195 0011 211 0011 227 0011 243 0011
132 0100 148 0100 164 0100 180 0100 196 0100 212 0100 228 0100 244 0100
133 0101 149 0101 165 0101 181 0101 197 0101 213 0101 229 0101 245 0101
134 0110 150 0110 166 0110 182 0110 198 0110 214 0110 230 0110 246 0110
135 0111 151 0111 167 0111 183 0111 199 0111 215 0111 231 0111 247 0111
136 1000 152 1000 168 1000 184 1000 200 1000 216 1000 232 1000 248 1000
137 1001 153 1001 169 1001 185 1001 201 1001 217 1001 233 1001 249 1001
138 1010 154 1010 170 1010 186 1010 202 1010 218 1010 234 1010 250 1010
139 1011 155 1011 171 1011 187 1011 203 1011 219 1011 235 1011 251 1011
140 1100 156 1100 172 1100 188 1100 204 1100 220 1100 236 1100 252 1100
141 1101 157 1101 173 1101 189 1101 205 1101 221 1101 237 1101 253 1101
142 1110 158 1110 174 1110 190 1110 206 1110 222 1110 238 1110 254 1110
143 1111 159 1111 175 1111 191 1111 207 1111 223 1111 239 1111 255 1111


The idea behind variable length subnet masks is to offer more flexibility
in dealing with dividing a major net into multiple subnets and still
being able to maintain an adequate number of hosts in each subnet. With-
out VLSM one subnet mask only can be applied to a major network. This
would restrict the number of hosts given the number of subnets required.
If we pick the mask such that we have enough subnets, we wouldn’t be able
to allocate enough hosts in each subnet. The same is true for the hosts;
a mask that allows enough hosts might not provide enough subnet space.

For example, suppose you were assigned a class C network 192.214.11.0 and
you need to divide that network into three subnets with 100 hosts in one
subnet and 50 hosts for each of the remaining subnets. Ignoring the two
end limits 0 and 255, you have theoretically available to you 256
addresses (192.214.11.0 - 192.214.11.255). This can not be done without
VLSM.

64 hosts
192.213.11.X E3
E2
128 hosts
E4
64 hosts

There are a handful of subnet masks that can be used; remember that a
mask should have a contiguous number of ones starting from the left and
the rest of the bits being all 0s.

-252 (1111 1100) The address space is divided into 64.

Without VLSM we have the choice of using mask 255.255.255.128 and divid-
ing the addresses into 2 subnets with 128 hosts each or using
255.255.255.192 and dividing the space into 4 subnets with 64 hosts each.
This would not meet the requirement. By using multiple masks we can use
mask 128 and further subnet the second chunk of addresses with mask 192.
The following table shows how we have divided the address space accord-
ingly.


VLSM

128 addresses (E2)
(mask 255.255.255.128)

64 addresses (E3) 64 addresses (E4)
(mask 255.255.255.192) (mask 255.255.255.192)

Now, be careful in allocating the IP addresses to each mask. Once you
assign an IP address to the router or to a host you have used up the
whole subnet for that segment. For example, if you assign 192.214.11.10
255.255.255.128 to E2, the whole range of addresses between 192.214.11.0
and 192.214.11.127 is consumed by E2. In the same way if you assign
192.214.11.160 255.255.255.128 to E2, the whole range of addresses
between 192.214.11.128 and 192.214.11.255 is consumed by the E2 segment.

The following is an illustration of how the router will interpret these
addresses. Please remember that any time you are using a mask different
than the natural mask, for instance you are subnetting, the router will
complain if the combination IP address and mask will result in a subnet
zero. To resolve this issue use the command ip subnet-zero on the router.

RTA#

ip subnet-zero

interface Ethernet2
ip address 192.214.11.10 255.255.255.128

interface Ethernet3
ip address 192.214.11.160 255.255.255.192

interface Ethernet4
ip address 192.214.11.226 255.255.255.192

RTA# sh ip route connected
C 192.214.11.0 255.255.255.128 is directly connected, Ethernet2


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