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Network Working Group J. Moy Internet Draft Proteon, Inc. Expiration Date: April 1993 November 1992 OSPF Version 2 Status of this Memo This document is an Internet Draft. Internet Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its Areas, and its Working Groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet Drafts. Internet Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months. Internet Drafts may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is not appropriate to use Internet Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as a "work- ing draft" or "work in progress." Please check the 1id-abstracts.txt listing contained in the internet-drafts Shadow Directories on nic.ddn.mil, nnsc.nsf.net, nic.nordu.net, ftp.nisc.sri.com, or munnari.oz.au to learn the current status of any Internet Draft. Abstract This memo documents version 2 of the OSPF protocol. OSPF is a link-state based routing protocol. It is designed to be run inter- nal to a single Autonomous System. Each OSPF router maintains an identical database describing the Autonomous System's topology. From this database, a routing table is calculated by constructing a shortest-path tree. OSPF recalculates routes quickly in the face of topological changes, utilizing a minimum of routing protocol traffic. OSPF provides sup- port for equal-cost multipath. Separate routes can be calculated for each IP type of service. An area routing capability is pro- vided, enabling an additional level of routing protection and a reduction in routing protocol traffic. In addition, all OSPF rout- ing protocol exchanges are authenticated. OSPF Version 2 was originally documented in RFC 1247. The differ- ences between RFC 1247 and this memo are explained in Appendix E. The differences consist of bug fixes and clarifications, and are backward-compatible in nature. Implementations of RFC 1247 and of this memo will interoperate. [Moy] [Page 1] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 Please send comments to ospf@gated.cornell.edu. [Moy] [Page 2] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 Table of Contents 1 Introduction ........................................... 6 1.1 Protocol Overview ...................................... 6 1.2 Definitions of commonly used terms ..................... 7 1.3 Brief history of SPF-based routing technology ......... 10 1.4 Organization of this document ......................... 10 2 The Topological Database .............................. 11 2.1 The shortest-path tree ................................ 14 2.2 Use of external routing information ................... 17 2.3 Equal-cost multipath .................................. 21 2.4 TOS-based routing ..................................... 21 3 Splitting the AS into Areas ........................... 22 3.1 The backbone of the Autonomous System ................. 23 3.2 Inter-area routing .................................... 23 3.3 Classification of routers ............................. 24 3.4 A sample area configuration ........................... 25 3.5 IP subnetting support ................................. 30 3.6 Supporting stub areas ................................. 32 3.7 Partitions of areas ................................... 33 4 Functional Summary .................................... 34 4.1 Inter-area routing .................................... 35 4.2 AS external routes .................................... 35 4.3 Routing protocol packets .............................. 35 4.4 Basic implementation requirements ..................... 38 4.5 Optional OSPF capabilities ............................ 39 5 Protocol data structures .............................. 40 6 The Area Data Structure ............................... 42 7 Bringing Up Adjacencies ............................... 45 7.1 The Hello Protocol .................................... 45 7.2 The Synchronization of Databases ...................... 46 7.3 The Designated Router ................................. 47 7.4 The Backup Designated Router .......................... 48 7.5 The graph of adjacencies .............................. 49 8 Protocol Packet Processing ............................ 49 8.1 Sending protocol packets .............................. 50 8.2 Receiving protocol packets ............................ 52 9 The Interface Data Structure .......................... 55 9.1 Interface states ...................................... 57 9.2 Events causing interface state changes ................ 60 9.3 The Interface state machine ........................... 61 9.4 Electing the Designated Router ........................ 64 9.5 Sending Hello packets ................................. 66 9.5.1 Sending Hello packets on non-broadcast networks ....... 67 10 The Neighbor Data Structure ........................... 68 10.1 Neighbor states ....................................... 71 10.2 Events causing neighbor state changes ................. 74 10.3 The Neighbor state machine ............................ 76 [Moy] [Page 3] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 10.4 Whether to become adjacent ............................ 82 10.5 Receiving Hello packets ............................... 82 10.6 Receiving Database Description Packets ................ 84 10.7 Receiving Link State Request Packets .................. 87 10.8 Sending Database Description Packets .................. 88 10.9 Sending Link State Request Packets .................... 89 10.10 An Example ............................................ 89 11 The Routing Table Structure ........................... 91 11.1 Routing table lookup .................................. 94 11.2 Sample routing table, without areas ................... 96 11.3 Sample routing table, with areas ...................... 96 12 Link State Advertisements ............................. 99 12.1 The Link State Header ................................ 100 12.1.1 LS age ............................................... 100 12.1.2 Options .............................................. 101 12.1.3 LS type .............................................. 101 12.1.4 Link State ID ........................................ 103 12.1.5 Advertising Router ................................... 104 12.1.6 LS sequence number ................................... 104 12.1.7 LS checksum .......................................... 105 12.2 The link state database .............................. 105 12.3 Representation of TOS ................................ 106 12.4 Originating link state advertisements ................ 107 12.4.1 Router links ......................................... 110 12.4.2 Network links ........................................ 116 12.4.3 Summary links ........................................ 117 12.4.4 Originating summary links into stub areas ............ 121 12.4.5 AS external links .................................... 121 13 The Flooding Procedure ............................... 124 13.1 Determining which link state is newer ................ 127 13.2 Installing link state advertisements in the database . 128 13.3 Next step in the flooding procedure .................. 129 13.4 Receiving self-originated link state ................. 131 13.5 Sending Link State Acknowledgment packets ............ 132 13.6 Retransmitting link state advertisements ............. 134 13.7 Receiving link state acknowledgments ................. 135 14 Aging The Link State Database ........................ 135 14.1 Premature aging of advertisements .................... 136 15 Virtual Links ........................................ 137 16 Calculation Of The Routing Table ..................... 139 16.1 Calculating the shortest-path tree for an area ....... 140 16.1.1 The next hop calculation ............................. 146 16.2 Calculating the inter-area routes .................... 147 16.3 Examining transit areas' summary links ............... 148 16.4 Calculating AS external routes ....................... 150 16.5 Incremental updates --- summary links ................ 152 16.6 Incremental updates --- AS external links ............ 153 16.7 Events generated as a result of routing table changes 153 [Moy] [Page 4] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 16.8 Equal-cost multipath ................................. 154 16.9 Building the non-zero-TOS portion of the routing table 154 Footnotes ............................................ 157 References ........................................... 160 A OSPF data formats .................................... 162 A.1 Encapsulation of OSPF packets ........................ 162 A.2 The options field .................................... 164 A.3 OSPF Packet Formats .................................. 166 A.3.1 The OSPF packet header ............................... 167 A.3.2 The Hello packet ..................................... 169 A.3.3 The Database Description packet ...................... 171 A.3.4 The Link State Request packet ........................ 173 A.3.5 The Link State Update packet ......................... 175 A.3.6 The Link State Acknowledgment packet ................. 177 A.4 Link state advertisement formats ..................... 179 A.4.1 The Link State Advertisement header .................. 180 A.4.2 Router links advertisements .......................... 182 A.4.3 Network links advertisements ......................... 186 A.4.4 Summary link advertisements .......................... 188 A.4.5 AS external link advertisements ...................... 190 B Architectural Constants .............................. 192 C Configurable Constants ............................... 194 C.1 Global parameters .................................... 194 C.2 Area parameters ...................................... 194 C.3 Router interface parameters .......................... 196 C.4 Virtual link parameters .............................. 198 C.5 Non-broadcast, multi-access network parameters ....... 198 C.6 Host route parameters ................................ 199 D Authentication ....................................... 200 D.1 Autype 0 -- No authentication ........................ 200 D.2 Autype 1 -- Simple password .......................... 200 E Differences from RFC 1247 ............................ 202 E.1 A fix for a problem with OSPF Virtual links .......... 202 E.2 Supporting supernetting and subnet 0 ................. 203 E.3 Obsoleting LSInfinity in router-LSAs ................. 204 E.4 TOS encoding updated ................................. 204 E.5 Summarizing routes into transit areas ................ 205 E.6 Summarizing routes into stub areas ................... 205 E.7 Required Statistics appendix deleted ................. 205 E.8 Other changes ........................................ 205 F. An algorithm for assigning Link State IDs ............ 207 [Moy] [Page 5] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 1. Introduction This document is a specification of the Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) internet routing protocol. OSPF is classified as an Internal Gateway Protocol (IGP). This means that it distributes routing information between routers belonging to a single Autonomous System. The OSPF protocol is based on SPF or link-state technology. This is a departure from the Bellman-Ford base used by traditional TCP/IP internet routing protocols. The OSPF protocol was developed by the OSPF working group of the Internet Engineering Task Force. It has been designed expressly for the TCP/IP internet environment, including explicit support for IP subnetting, TOS-based routing and the tagging of externally-derived routing information. OSPF also provides for the authentication of routing updates, and utilizes IP multicast when sending/receiving the updates. In addition, much work has been done to produce a pro- tocol that responds quickly to topology changes, yet involves small amounts of routing protocol traffic. The author would like to thank Fred Baker, Jeffrey Burgan, Rob Col- tun, Dino Farinacci, Vince Fuller, Phanindra Jujjavarapu, Milo Medin, Kannan Varadhan and the rest of the OSPF working group for the ideas and support they have given to this project. 1.1. Protocol overview OSPF routes IP packets based solely on the destination IP address and IP Type of Service found in the IP packet header. IP packets are routed "as is" -- they are not encapsulated in any further protocol headers as they transit the Autonomous Sys- tem. OSPF is a dynamic routing protocol. It quickly detects topological changes in the AS (such as router interface failures) and calculates new loop-free routes after a period of convergence. This period of convergence is short and involves a minimum of routing traffic. In an SPF-based routing protocol, each router maintains a data- base describing the Autonomous System's topology. Each partici- pating router has an identical database. Each individual piece of this database is a particular router's local state (e.g., the router's usable interfaces and reachable neighbors). The router distributes its local state throughout the Autonomous System by flooding. All routers run the exact same algorithm, in parallel. From the topological database, each router constructs a tree of shortest paths with itself as root. This shortest-path tree gives the [Moy] [Page 6] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 route to each destination in the Autonomous System. Externally derived routing information appears on the tree as leaves. OSPF calculates separate routes for each Type of Service (TOS). When several equal-cost routes to a destination exist, traffic is distributed equally among them. The cost of a route is described by a single dimensionless metric. OSPF allows sets of networks to be grouped together. Such a grouping is called an area. The topology of an area is hidden from the rest of the Autonomous System. This information hiding enables a significant reduction in routing traffic. Also, rout- ing within the area is determined only by the area's own topol- ogy, lending the area protection from bad routing data. An area is a generalization of an IP subnetted network. OSPF enables the flexible configuration of IP subnets. Each route distributed by OSPF has a destination and mask. Two dif- ferent subnets of the same IP network number may have different sizes (i.e., different masks). This is commonly referred to as variable length subnets. A packet is routed to the best (i.e., longest or most specific) match. Host routes are considered to be subnets whose masks are "all ones" (0xffffffff). All OSPF protocol exchanges are authenticated. This means that only trusted routers can participate in the Autonomous System's routing. A variety of authentication schemes can be used; a single authentication scheme is configured for each area. This enables some areas to use much stricter authentication than oth- ers. Externally derived routing data (e.g., routes learned from the Exterior Gateway Protocol (EGP)) is passed transparently throughout the Autonomous System. This externally derived data is kept separate from the OSPF protocol's link state data. Each external route can also be tagged by the advertising router, enabling the passing of additional information between routers on the boundaries of the Autonomous System. 1.2. Definitions of commonly used terms Here is a collection of definitions for terms that have a specific meaning to the protocol and that are used throughout the text. The reader unfamiliar with the Internet Protocol Suite is referred to [RS-85-153] for an introduction to IP. [Moy] [Page 7] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 Router A level three Internet Protocol packet switch. Formerly called a gateway in much of the IP literature. Autonomous System A group of routers exchanging routing information via a com- mon routing protocol. Abbreviated as AS. Internal Gateway Protocol The routing protocol spoken by the routers belonging to an Autonomous system. Abbreviated as IGP. Each Autonomous System has a single IGP. Different Autonomous Systems may be running different IGPs. Router ID A 32-bit number assigned to each router running the OSPF protocol. This number uniquely identifies the router within an Autonomous System. Network In this paper, an IP network or subnet. It is possible for one physical network to be assigned multiple IP network/subnet numbers. We consider these to be separate networks. Point-to-point physical networks are an exception - they are considered a single network no matter how many (if any at all) IP network/subnet numbers are assigned to them. Network mask A 32-bit number indicating the range of IP addresses resid- ing on a single IP network/subnet. This specification displays network masks as hexadecimal numbers. For example, the network mask for a class C IP network is displayed as 0xffffff00. Such a mask is often displayed elsewhere in the literature as 255.255.255.0. Multi-access networks Those physical networks that support the attachment of mul- tiple (more than two) routers. Each pair of routers on such a network is assumed to be able to communicate directly (e.g., multi-drop networks are excluded). Interface The connection between a router and one of its attached net- works. An interface has state information associated with it, which is obtained from the underlying lower level proto- cols and the routing protocol itself. An interface to a network has associated with it a single IP address and mask [Moy] [Page 8] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 (unless the network is an unnumbered point-to-point net- work). An interface is sometimes also referred to as a link. Neighboring routers Two routers that have interfaces to a common network. On multi-access networks, neighbors are dynamically discovered by OSPF's Hello Protocol. Adjacency A relationship formed between selected neighboring routers for the purpose of exchanging routing information. Not every pair of neighboring routers become adjacent. Link state advertisement Describes to the local state of a router or network. This includes the state of the router's interfaces and adjacen- cies. Each link state advertisement is flooded throughout the routing domain. The collected link state advertisements of all routers and networks forms the protocol's topological database. Hello protocol The part of the OSPF protocol used to establish and maintain neighbor relationships. On multi-access networks the Hello protocol can also dynamically discover neighboring routers. Designated Router Each multi-access network that has at least two attached routers has a Designated Router. The Designated Router gen- erates a link state advertisement for the multi-access net- work and has other special responsibilities in the running of the protocol. The Designated Router is elected by the Hello Protocol. The Designated Router concept enables a reduction in the number of adjacencies required on a multi-access network. This in turn reduces the amount of routing protocol traffic and the size of the topological database. Lower-level protocols The underlying network access protocols that provide ser- vices to the Internet Protocol and in turn the OSPF proto- col. Examples of these are the X.25 packet and frame levels for PDNs, and the ethernet data link layer for ethernets. [Moy] [Page 9] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 1.3. Brief history of SPF-based routing technology OSPF is an SPF-based routing protocol. Such protocols are also referred to in the literature as link-state or distributed- database protocols. This section gives a brief description of the developments in SPF-based technology that have influenced the OSPF protocol. The first SPF-based routing protocol was developed for use in the ARPANET packet switching network. This protocol is described in [McQuillan]. It has formed the starting point for all other SPF-based protocols. The homogeneous Arpanet environ- ment, i.e., single-vendor packet switches connected by synchro- nous serial lines, simplified the design and implementation of the original protocol. Modifications to this protocol were proposed in [Perlman]. These modifications dealt with increasing the fault tolerance of the routing protocol through, among other things, adding a checksum to the link state advertisements (thereby detecting database corruption). The paper also included means for reduc- ing the routing traffic overhead in an SPF-based protocol. This was accomplished by introducing mechanisms which enabled the interval between link state advertisements to be increased by an order of magnitude. An SPF-based algorithm has also been proposed for use as an ISO IS-IS routing protocol. This protocol is described in [DEC]. The protocol includes methods for data and routing traffic reduction when operating over broadcast networks. This is accomplished by election of a Designated Router for each broad- cast network, which then originates a link state advertisement for the network. The OSPF subcommittee of the IETF has extended this work in developing the OSPF protocol. The Designated Router concept has been greatly enhanced to further reduce the amount of routing traffic required. Multicast capabilities are utilized for addi- tional routing bandwidth reduction. An area routing scheme has been developed enabling information hiding/protection/reduction. Finally, the algorithm has been modified for efficient operation in the internet environment. 1.4. Organization of this document The first three sections of this specification give a general overview of the protocol's capabilities and functions. Sections [Moy] [Page 10] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 4-16 explain the protocol's mechanisms in detail. Packet for- mats, protocol constants, configuration items and required management statistics are specified in the appendices. Labels such as HelloInterval encountered in the text refer to protocol constants. They may or may not be configurable. The architectural constants are explained in Appendix B. The confi- gurable constants are explained in Appendix C. The detailed specification of the protocol is presented in terms of data structures. This is done in order to make the explana- tion more precise. Implementations of the protocol are required to support the functionality described, but need not use the precise data structures that appear in this paper. 2. The Topological Database The database of the Autonomous System's topology describes a directed graph. The vertices of the graph consist of routers and networks. A graph edge connects two routers when they are attached via a physical point-to-point network. An edge connecting a router to a network indicates that the router has an interface on the net- work. The vertices of the graph can be further typed according to func- tion. Only some of these types carry transit data traffic; that is, traffic that is neither locally originated nor locally destined. Vertices that can carry transit traffic are indicated on the graph by having both incoming and outgoing edges. Vertex type Vertex name Transit? _____________________________________ 1 Router yes 2 Network yes 3 Stub network no Table 1: OSPF vertex types. OSPF supports the following types of physical networks: Point-to-point networks A network that joins a single pair of routers. A 56Kb serial [Moy] [Page 11] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 line is an example of a point-to-point network. Broadcast networks Networks supporting many (more than two) attached routers, together with the capability to address a single physical mes- sage to all of the attached routers (broadcast). Neighboring routers are discovered dynamically on these nets using OSPF's Hello Protocol. The Hello Protocol itself takes advantage of the broadcast capability. The protocol makes further use of multicast capabilities, if they exist. An ethernet is an exam- ple of a broadcast network. Non-broadcast networks Networks supporting many (more than two) routers, but having no broadcast capability. Neighboring routers are also discovered on these nets using OSPF's Hello Protocol. However, due to the lack of broadcast capability, some configuration information is necessary for the correct operation of the Hello Protocol. On these networks, OSPF protocol packets that are normally multi- cast need to be sent to each neighboring router, in turn. An X.25 Public Data Network (PDN) is an example of a non-broadcast network. The neighborhood of each network node in the graph depends on whether the network has multi-access capabilities (either broadcast or non-broadcast) and, if so, the number of routers having an inter- face to the network. The three cases are depicted in Figure 1. Rectangles indicate routers. Circles and oblongs indicate multi- access networks. Router names are prefixed with the letters RT and network names with N. Router interface names are prefixed by I. Lines between routers indicate point-to-point networks. The left side of the figure shows a network with its connected routers, with the resulting graph shown on the right. Two routers joined by a point-to-point network are represented in the directed graph as being directly connected by a pair of edges, one in each direction. Interfaces to physical point-to-point net- works need not be assigned IP addresses. Such a point-to-point net- work is called unnumbered. The graphical representation of point- to-point networks is designed so that unnumbered networks can be supported naturally. When interface addresses exist, they are modelled as stub routes. Note that each router would then have a stub connection to the other router's interface address (see Figure 1). When multiple routers are attached to a multi-access network, the directed graph shows all routers bidirectionally connected to the [Moy] [Page 12] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 **FROM** * |RT1|RT2| +---+Ia +---+ * ------------ |RT1|------|RT2| T RT1| | X | +---+ Ib+---+ O RT2| X | | * Ia| | X | * Ib| X | | Physical point-to-point networks **FROM** +---+ +---+ |RT3| |RT4| |RT3|RT4|RT5|RT6|N2 | +---+ +---+ * ------------------------ | N2 | * RT3| | | | | X | +----------------------+ T RT4| | | | | X | | | O RT5| | | | | X | +---+ +---+ * RT6| | | | | X | |RT5| |RT6| * N2| X | X | X | X | | +---+ +---+ Multi-access networks **FROM** +---+ * |RT7| * |RT7| N3| +---+ T ------------ | O RT7| | | +----------------------+ * N3| X | | N3 * Stub multi-access networks Figure1: Network map components Networks and routers are represented by vertices. An edge connects Vertex A to Vertex B iff the intersection of Column A and Row B is marked with an X. network vertex (again, see Figure 1). If only a single router is attached to a multi-access network, the network will appear in the directed graph as a stub connection. [Moy] [Page 13] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 Each network (stub or transit) in the graph has an IP address and associated network mask. The mask indicates the number of nodes on the network. Hosts attached directly to routers (referred to as host routes) appear on the graph as stub networks. The network mask for a host route is always 0xffffffff, which indicates the presence of a single node. Figure 2 shows a sample map of an Autonomous System. The rectangle labelled H1 indicates a host, which has a SLIP connection to router RT12. Router RT12 is therefore advertising a host route. Lines between routers indicate physical point-to-point networks. The only point-to-point network that has been assigned interface addresses is the one joining routers RT6 and RT10. Routers RT5 and RT7 have EGP connections to other Autonomous Systems. A set of EGP-learned routes have been displayed for both of these routers. A cost is associated with the output side of each router interface. This cost is configurable by the system administrator. The lower the cost, the more likely the interface is to be used to forward data traffic. Costs are also associated with the externally derived routing data (e.g., the EGP-learned routes). The directed graph resulting from the map in Figure 2 is depicted in Figure 3. Arcs are labelled with the cost of the corresponding router output interface. Arcs having no labelled cost have a cost of 0. Note that arcs leading from networks to routers always have cost 0; they are significant nonetheless. Note also that the exter- nally derived routing data appears on the graph as stubs. The topological database (or what has been referred to above as the directed graph) is pieced together from link state advertisements generated by the routers. The neighborhood of each transit vertex is represented in a single, separate link state advertisement. Fig- ure 4 shows graphically the link state representation of the two kinds of transit vertices: routers and multi-access networks. Router RT12 has an interface to two broadcast networks and a SLIP line to a host. Network N6 is a broadcast network with three attached routers. The cost of all links from network N6 to its attached routers is 0. Note that the link state advertisement for network N6 is actually generated by one of the attached routers: the router that has been elected Designated Router for the network. 2.1. The shortest-path tree When no OSPF areas are configured, each router in the Autonomous System has an identical topological database, leading to an identical graphical representation. A router generates its routing table from this graph by calculating a tree of shortest [Moy] [Page 14] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 + | 3+---+ N12 N14 N1|--|RT1|\ 1 \ N13 / | +---+ \ 8\ |8/8 + \ ____ \|/ / \ 1+---+8 8+---+6 * N3 *---|RT4|------|RT5|--------+ \____/ +---+ +---+ | + / | |7 | | 3+---+ / | | | N2|--|RT2|/1 |1 |6 | | +---+ +---+8 6+---+ | + |RT3|--------------|RT6| | +---+ +---+ | |2 Ia|7 | | | | +---------+ | | N4 | | | | | | N11 | | +---------+ | | | | | N12 |3 | |6 2/ +---+ | +---+/ |RT9| | |RT7|---N15 +---+ | +---+ 9 |1 + | |1 _|__ | Ib|5 __|_ / \ 1+----+2 | 3+----+1 / \ * N9 *------|RT11|----|---|RT10|---* N6 * \____/ +----+ | +----+ \____/ | | | |1 + |1 +--+ 10+----+ N8 +---+ |H1|-----|RT12| |RT8| +--+SLIP +----+ +---+ |2 |4 | | +---------+ +--------+ N10 N7 Figure 2: A sample Autonomous System [Moy] [Page 15] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 **FROM** |RT|RT|RT|RT|RT|RT|RT|RT|RT|RT|RT|RT| |1 |2 |3 |4 |5 |6 |7 |8 |9 |10|11|12|N3|N6|N8|N9| ----- --------------------------------------------- RT1| | | | | | | | | | | | |0 | | | | RT2| | | | | | | | | | | | |0 | | | | RT3| | | | | |6 | | | | | | |0 | | | | RT4| | | | |8 | | | | | | | |0 | | | | RT5| | | |8 | |6 |6 | | | | | | | | | | RT6| | |8 | |7 | | | | |5 | | | | | | | RT7| | | | |6 | | | | | | | | |0 | | | * RT8| | | | | | | | | | | | | |0 | | | * RT9| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |0 | T RT10| | | | | |7 | | | | | | | |0 |0 | | O RT11| | | | | | | | | | | | | | |0 |0 | * RT12| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |0 | * N1|3 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | N2| |3 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | N3|1 |1 |1 |1 | | | | | | | | | | | | | N4| | |2 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | N6| | | | | | |1 |1 | |1 | | | | | | | N7| | | | | | | |4 | | | | | | | | | N8| | | | | | | | | |3 |2 | | | | | | N9| | | | | | | | |1 | |1 |1 | | | | | N10| | | | | | | | | | | |2 | | | | | N11| | | | | | | | |3 | | | | | | | | N12| | | | |8 | |2 | | | | | | | | | | N13| | | | |8 | | | | | | | | | | | | N14| | | | |8 | | | | | | | | | | | | N15| | | | | | |9 | | | | | | | | | | H1| | | | | | | | | | | |10| | | | | Figure 3: The resulting directed graph Networks and routers are represented by vertices. An edge of cost X connects Vertex A to Vertex B iff the intersection of Column A and Row B is marked with an X. [Moy] [Page 16] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 **FROM** **FROM** |RT12|N9|N10|H1| |RT9|RT11|RT12|N9| * -------------------- * ---------------------- * RT12| | | | | * RT9| | | |0 | T N9|1 | | | | T RT11| | | |0 | O N10|2 | | | | O RT12| | | |0 | * H1|10 | | | | * N9| | | | | * * RT12's router links N9's Network links advertisement advertisement Figure 4: Individual link state components Networks and routers are represented by vertices. An edge of cost X connects Vertex A to Vertex B iff the intersection of Column A and Row B is marked with an X. paths with the router itself as root. Obviously, the shortest- path tree depends on the router doing the calculation. The shortest-path tree for router RT6 in our example is depicted in Figure 5. The tree gives the entire route to any destination network or host. However, only the next hop to the destination is used in the forwarding process. Note also that the best route to any router has also been calculated. For the processing of external data, we note the next hop and distance to any router advertis- ing external routes. The resulting routing table for router RT6 is pictured in Table 2. Note that there is a separate route for each end of a numbered serial line (in this case, the serial line between routers RT6 and RT10). Routes to networks belonging to other AS'es (such as N12) appear as dashed lines on the shortest path tree in Figure 5. Use of this externally derived routing information is considered in the next section. 2.2. Use of external routing information After the tree is created the external routing information is examined. This external routing information may originate from another routing protocol such as EGP, or be statically config- ured (static routes). Default routes can also be included as part of the Autonomous System's external routing information. [Moy] [Page 17] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 RT6(origin) RT5 o------------o-----------o Ib /|\ 6 |\ 7 8/8|8\ | \ / | \ | \ o | o | \7 N12 o N14 | \ N13 2 | \ N4 o-----o RT3 \ / \ 5 1/ RT10 o-------o Ia / |\ RT4 o-----o N3 3| \1 /| | \ N6 RT7 / | N8 o o---------o / | | | /| RT2 o o RT1 | | 2/ |9 / | | |RT8 / | /3 |3 RT11 o o o o / | | | N12 N15 N2 o o N1 1| |4 | | N9 o o N7 /| / | N11 RT9 / |RT12 o--------o-------o o--------o H1 3 | 10 |2 | o N10 Figure 5: The SPF tree for router RT6 Edges that are not marked with a cost have a cost of of zero (these are network-to-router links). Routes to networks N12-N15 are external information that is considered in Section 2.2 [Moy] [Page 18] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 Destination Next Hop Distance __________________________________ N1 RT3 10 N2 RT3 10 N3 RT3 7 N4 RT3 8 Ib * 7 Ia RT10 12 N6 RT10 8 N7 RT10 12 N8 RT10 10 N9 RT10 11 N10 RT10 13 N11 RT10 14 H1 RT10 21 __________________________________ RT5 RT5 6 RT7 RT10 8 Table 2: The portion of router RT6's routing table listing local destinations. External routing information is flooded unaltered throughout the AS. In our example, all the routers in the Autonomous System know that router RT7 has two external routes, with metrics 2 and 9. OSPF supports two types of external metrics. Type 1 external metrics are equivalent to the link state metric. Type 2 exter- nal metrics are greater than the cost of any path internal to the AS. Use of Type 2 external metrics assumes that routing between AS'es is the major cost of routing a packet, and elim- inates the need for conversion of external costs to internal link state metrics. Here is an example of Type 1 external metric processing. Sup- pose that the routers RT7 and RT5 in Figure 2 are advertising Type 1 external metrics. For each external route, the distance from Router RT6 is calculated as the sum of the external route's cost and the distance from Router RT6 to the advertising router. For every external destination, the router advertising the shor- test route is discovered, and the next hop to the advertising router becomes the next hop to the destination. Both Router RT5 and RT7 are advertising an external route to destination network N12. Router RT7 is preferred since it is advertising N12 at a distance of 10 (8+2) to Router RT6, which [Moy] [Page 19] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 is better than router RT5's 14 (6+8). Table 3 shows the entries that are added to the routing table when external routes are examined: Destination Next Hop Distance __________________________________ N12 RT10 10 N13 RT5 14 N14 RT5 14 N15 RT10 17 Table 3: The portion of router RT6's routing table listing external destinations. Processing of Type 2 external metrics is simpler. The AS boun- dary router advertising the smallest external metric is chosen, regardless of the internal distance to the AS boundary router. Suppose in our example both router RT5 and router RT7 were advertising Type 2 external routes. Then all traffic destined for network N12 would be forwarded to router RT7, since 2 < 8. When several equal-cost Type 2 routes exist, the internal dis- tance to the advertising routers is used to break the tie. Both Type 1 and Type 2 external metrics can be present in the AS at the same time. In that event, Type 1 external metrics always take precedence. This section has assumed that packets destined for external des- tinations are always routed through the advertising AS boundary router. This is not always desirable. For example, suppose in Figure 2 there is an additional router attached to network N6, called Router RTX. Suppose further that RTX does not partici- pate in OSPF routing, but does exchange EGP information with the AS boundary router RT7. Then, router RT7 would end up advertis- ing OSPF external routes for all destinations that should be routed to RTX. An extra hop will sometimes be introduced if packets for these destinations need always be routed first to router RT7 (the advertising router). To deal with this situation, the OSPF protocol allows an AS boundary router to specify a "forwarding address" in its exter- nal advertisements. In the above example, Router RT7 would specify RTX's IP address as the "forwarding address" for all those destinations whose packets should be routed directly to [Moy] [Page 20] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 RTX. The "forwarding address" has one other application. It enables routers in the Autonomous System's interior to function as "route servers". For example, in Figure 2 the router RT6 could become a route server, gaining external routing information through a combination of static configuration and external rout- ing protocols. RT6 would then start advertising itself as an AS boundary router, and would originate a collection of OSPF exter- nal advertisements. In each external advertisement, router RT6 would specify the correct Autonomous System exit point to use for the destination through appropriate setting of the advertisement's "forwarding address" field. 2.3. Equal-cost multipath The above discussion has been simplified by considering only a single route to any destination. In reality, if multiple equal-cost routes to a destination exist, they are all discovered and used. This requires no conceptual changes to the algorithm, and its discussion is postponed until we consider the tree-building process in more detail. With equal cost multipath, a router potentially has several available next hops towards any given destination. 2.4. TOS-based routing OSPF can calculate a separate set of routes for each IP Type of Service. The IP TOS values are represented in OSPF exactly as they appear in the IP packet header. This means that, for any destination, there can potentially be multiple routing table entries, one for each IP TOS. Up to this point, all examples shown have assumed that routes do not vary on TOS. In order to differentiate routes based on TOS, separate interface costs can be configured for each TOS. For example, in Figure 2 there could be multiple costs (one for each TOS) listed for each interface. A cost for TOS 0 must always be specified. When interface costs vary based on TOS, a separate shortest path tree is calculated for each TOS (see Section 2.1). In addition, external costs can vary based on TOS. For example, in Figure 2 router RT7 could advertise a separate type 1 external metric for each TOS. Then, when calculating the TOS X distance to network [Moy] [Page 21] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 N15 the cost of the shortest TOS X path to RT7 would be added to the TOS X cost advertised by RT7 (see Section 2.2). All OSPF implementations must be capable of calculating routes based on TOS. However, OSPF routers can be configured to route all packets on the TOS 0 path (see Appendix C), eliminating the need to calculate non-zero TOS paths. This can be used to con- serve routing table space and processing resources in the router. These TOS-0-only routers can be mixed with routers that do route based on TOS. TOS-0-only routers will be avoided as much as possible when forwarding traffic requesting a non-zero TOS. It may be the case that no path exists for some non-zero TOS, even if the router is calculating non-zero TOS paths. In that case, packets requesting that non-zero TOS are routed along the TOS 0 path (see Section 11.1). 3. Splitting the AS into Areas OSPF allows collections of contiguous networks and hosts to be grouped together. Such a group, together with the routers having interfaces to any one of the included networks, is called an area. Each area runs a separate copy of the basic SPF routing algorithm. This means that each area has its own topological database and corresponding graph, as explained in the previous section. The topology of an area is invisible from the outside of the area. Conversely, routers internal to a given area know nothing of the detailed topology external to the area. This isolation of knowledge enables the protocol to effect a marked reduction in routing traffic as compared to treating the entire Autonomous System as a single SPF domain. With the introduction of areas, it is no longer true that all routers in the AS have an identical topological database. A router actually has a separate topological database for each area it is connected to. (Routers connected to multiple areas are called area border routers). Two routers belonging to the same area have, for that area, identical area topological databases. Routing in the Autonomous System takes place on two levels, depend- ing on whether the source and destination of a packet reside in the same area (intra-area routing is used) or different areas (inter- area routing is used). In intra-area routing, the packet is routed solely on information obtained within the area; no routing informa- tion obtained from outside the area can be used. This protects [Moy] [Page 22] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 intra-area routing from the injection of bad routing information. We discuss inter-area routing in Section 3.2. 3.1. The backbone of the Autonomous System The backbone consists of those networks not contained in any area, their attached routers, and those routers that belong to multiple areas. The backbone must be contiguous. It is possible to define areas in such a way that the backbone is no longer contiguous. In this case the system administrator must restore backbone connectivity by configuring virtual links. Virtual links can be configured between any two backbone routers that have an interface to a common non-backbone area. Virtual links belong to the backbone. The protocol treats two routers joined by a virtual link as if they were connected by an unnum- bered point-to-point network. On the graph of the backbone, two such routers are joined by arcs whose costs are the intra-area distances between the two routers. The routing protocol traffic that flows along the virtual link uses intra-area routing only. The backbone is responsible for distributing routing information between areas. The backbone itself has all of the properties of an area. The topology of the backbone is invisible to each of the areas, while the backbone itself knows nothing of the topol- ogy of the areas. 3.2. Inter-area routing When routing a packet between two areas the backbone is used. The path that the packet will travel can be broken up into three contiguous pieces: an intra-area path from the source to an area border router, a backbone path between the source and destina- tion areas, and then another intra-area path to the destination. The algorithm finds the set of such paths that have the smallest cost. Looking at this another way, inter-area routing can be pictured as forcing a star configuration on the Autonomous System, with the backbone as hub and and each of the areas as spokes. The topology of the backbone dictates the backbone paths used between areas. The topology of the backbone can be enhanced by adding virtual links. This gives the system administrator some control over the routes taken by inter-area traffic. [Moy] [Page 23] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 The correct area border router to use as the packet exits the source area is chosen in exactly the same way routers advertis- ing external routes are chosen. Each area border router in an area summarizes for the area its cost to all networks external to the area. After the SPF tree is calculated for the area, routes to all other networks are calculated by examining the summaries of the area border routers. 3.3. Classification of routers Before the introduction of areas, the only OSPF routers having a specialized function were those advertising external routing information, such as router RT5 in Figure 2. When the AS is split into OSPF areas, the routers are further divided according to function into the following four overlapping categories: Internal routers A router with all directly connected networks belonging to the same area. Routers with only backbone interfaces also belong to this category. These routers run a single copy of the basic routing algorithm. Area border routers A router that attaches to multiple areas. Area border routers run multiple copies of the basic algorithm, one copy for each attached area and an additional copy for the back- bone. Area border routers condense the topological informa- tion of their attached areas for distribution to the back- bone. The backbone in turn distributes the information to the other areas. Backbone routers A router that has an interface to the backbone. This includes all routers that interface to more than one area (i.e., area border routers). However, backbone routers do not have to be area border routers. Routers with all inter- faces connected to the backbone are considered to be inter- nal routers. AS boundary routers A router that exchanges routing information with routers belonging to other Autonomous Systems. Such a router has AS external routes that are advertised throughout the Auto- nomous System. The path to each AS boundary router is known by every router in the AS. This classification is com- pletely independent of the previous classifications: AS [Moy] [Page 24] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 boundary routers may be internal or area border routers, and may or may not participate in the backbone. 3.4. A sample area configuration Figure 6 shows a sample area configuration. The first area con- sists of networks N1-N4, along with their attached routers RT1- RT4. The second area consists of networks N6-N8, along with their attached routers RT7, RT8, RT10, RT11. The third area consists of networks N9-N11 and host H1, along with their attached routers RT9, RT11, RT12. The third area has been con- figured so that networks N9-N11 and host H1 will all be grouped into a single route, when advertised external to the area (see Section 3.5 for more details). In Figure 6, routers RT1, RT2, RT5, RT6, RT8, RT9 and RT12 are internal routers. Routers RT3, RT4, RT7, RT10 and RT11 are area border routers. Finally as before, routers RT5 and RT7 are AS boundary routers. Figure 7 shows the resulting topological database for the Area 1. The figure completely describes that area's intra-area rout- ing. It also shows the complete view of the internet for the two internal routers RT1 and RT2. It is the job of the area border routers, RT3 and RT4, to advertise into Area 1 the dis- tances to all destinations external to the area. These are indicated in Figure 7 by the dashed stub routes. Also, RT3 and RT4 must advertise into Area 1 the location of the AS boundary routers RT5 and RT7. Finally, external advertisements from RT5 and RT7 are flooded throughout the entire AS, and in particular throughout Area 1. These advertisements are included in Area 1's database, and yield routes to networks N12-N15. Routers RT3 and RT4 must also summarize Area 1's topology for distribution to the backbone. Their backbone advertisements are shown in Table 4. These summaries show which networks are con- tained in Area 1 (i.e., networks N1-N4), and the distance to these networks from the routers RT3 and RT4 respectively. The topological database for the backbone is shown in Figure 8. The set of routers pictured are the backbone routers. Router RT11 is a backbone router because it belongs to two areas. In order to make the backbone connected, a virtual link has been configured between routers R10 and R11. [Moy] [Page 25] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 ........................... . + . . | 3+---+ . N12 N14 . N1|--|RT1|\ 1 . \ N13 / . | +---+ \ . 8\ |8/8 . + \ ____ . \|/ . / \ 1+---+8 8+---+6 . * N3 *---|RT4|------|RT5|--------+ . \____/ +---+ +---+ | . + / | . |7 | . | 3+---+ / | . | | . N2|--|RT2|/1 |1 . |6 | . | +---+ +---+8 . 6+---+ | . + |RT3|--------------|RT6| | . +---+ . +---+ | . |2 . Ia|7 | . | . | | . +---------+ . | | .Area 1 N4 . | | ........................... | | .......................... | | . N11 . | | . +---------+ . | | . | . | | N12 . |3 . | |6 2/ . +---+ . | +---+/ . |RT9| . ...........|........|RT7|---N15. . +---+ . . | +---+ 9 . . |1 . . + | |1 . . _|__ . . | Ib|5 __|_ . . / \ 1+----+2 | 3+----+1 / \ . . * N9 *------|RT11|----|---|RT10|---* N6 * . . \____/ +----+ | +----+ \____/ . . | . . | | . . |1 . . + |1 . . +--+ 10+----+ . . N8 +---+ . . |H1|-----|RT12| . . |RT8| . . +--+SLIP +----+ . . +---+ . . |2 . . |4 . . | . . | . . +---------+ . . +--------+ . . N10 . . N7 . . . .Area 2 . .Area 3 . ................................ .......................... Figure 6: A sample OSPF area configuration [Moy] [Page 26] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 Network RT3 adv. RT4 adv. _____________________________ N1 4 4 N2 4 4 N3 1 1 N4 2 3 Table 4: Networks advertised to the backbone by routers RT3 and RT4. **FROM** |RT|RT|RT|RT|RT|RT| |1 |2 |3 |4 |5 |7 |N3| ----- ------------------- RT1| | | | | | |0 | RT2| | | | | | |0 | RT3| | | | | | |0 | * RT4| | | | | | |0 | * RT5| | |14|8 | | | | T RT7| | |20|14| | | | O N1|3 | | | | | | | * N2| |3 | | | | | | * N3|1 |1 |1 |1 | | | | N4| | |2 | | | | | Ia,Ib| | |15|22| | | | N6| | |16|15| | | | N7| | |20|19| | | | N8| | |18|18| | | | N9-N11,H1| | |19|16| | | | N12| | | | |8 |2 | | N13| | | | |8 | | | N14| | | | |8 | | | N15| | | | | |9 | | Figure 7: Area 1's Database. Networks and routers are represented by vertices. An edge of cost X connects Vertex A to Vertex B iff the intersection of Column A and Row B is marked with an X. Again, routers RT3, RT4, RT7, RT10 and RT11 are area border routers. As routers RT3 and RT4 did above, they have condensed the routing information of their attached areas for distribution via the backbone; these are the dashed stubs that appear in Fig- ure 8. Remember that the third area has been configured to [Moy] [Page 27] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 condense networks N9-N11 and Host H1 into a single route. This yields a single dashed line for networks N9-N11 and Host H1 in Figure 8. Routers RT5 and RT7 are AS boundary routers; their externally derived information also appears on the graph in Fig- ure 8 as stubs. The backbone enables the exchange of summary information between area border routers. Every area border router hears the area summaries from all other area border routers. It then forms a picture of the distance to all networks outside of its area by examining the collected advertisements, and adding in the **FROM** |RT|RT|RT|RT|RT|RT|RT |3 |4 |5 |6 |7 |10|11| ------------------------ RT3| | | |6 | | | | RT4| | |8 | | | | | RT5| |8 | |6 |6 | | | RT6|8 | |7 | | |5 | | RT7| | |6 | | | | | * RT10| | | |7 | | |2 | * RT11| | | | | |3 | | T N1|4 |4 | | | | | | O N2|4 |4 | | | | | | * N3|1 |1 | | | | | | * N4|2 |3 | | | | | | Ia| | | | | |5 | | Ib| | | |7 | | | | N6| | | | |1 |1 |3 | N7| | | | |5 |5 |7 | N8| | | | |4 |3 |2 | N9-N11,H1| | | | | | |1 | N12| | |8 | |2 | | | N13| | |8 | | | | | N14| | |8 | | | | | N15| | | | |9 | | | Figure 8: The backbone's database. Networks and routers are represented by vertices. An edge of cost X connects Vertex A to Vertex B iff the intersection of Column A and Row B is marked with an X. [Moy] [Page 28] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 backbone distance to each advertising router. Again using routers RT3 and RT4 as an example, the procedure goes as follows: They first calculate the SPF tree for the back- bone. This gives the distances to all other area border routers. Also noted are the distances to networks (Ia and Ib) and AS boundary routers (RT5 and RT7) that belong to the back- bone. This calculation is shown in Table 5. Next, by looking at the area summaries from these area border routers, RT3 and RT4 can determine the distance to all networks outside their area. These distances are then advertised inter- nally to the area by RT3 and RT4. The advertisements that router RT3 and RT4 will make into Area 1 are shown in Table 6. Note that Table 6 assumes that an area range has been configured for the backbone which groups I5 and I6 into a single advertise- ment. The information imported into Area 1 by routers RT3 and RT4 enables an internal router, such as RT1, to choose an area border router intelligently. Router RT1 would use RT4 for traffic to network N6, RT3 for traffic to network N10, and would load share between the two for traffic to network N8. Area border dist from dist from router RT3 RT4 ______________________________________ to RT3 * 21 to RT4 22 * to RT7 20 14 to RT10 15 22 to RT11 18 25 ______________________________________ to Ia 20 27 to Ib 15 22 ______________________________________ to RT5 14 8 to RT7 20 14 Table 5: Backbone distances calculated by routers RT3 and RT4. [Moy] [Page 29] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 Destination RT3 adv. RT4 adv. _________________________________ Ia,Ib 15 22 N6 16 15 N7 20 19 N8 18 18 N9-N11,H1 19 26 _________________________________ RT5 14 8 RT7 20 14 Table 6: Destinations advertised into Area 1 by routers RT3 and RT4. Router RT1 can also determine in this manner the shortest path to the AS boundary routers RT5 and RT7. Then, by looking at RT5 and RT7's external advertisements, router RT1 can decide between RT5 or RT7 when sending to a destination in another Autonomous System (one of the networks N12-N15). Note that a failure of the line between routers RT6 and RT10 will cause the backbone to become disconnected. Configuring another virtual link between routers RT7 and RT10 will give the backbone more connectivity and more resistance to such failures. Also, a virtual link between RT7 and RT10 would allow a much shorter path between the third area (containing N9) and the router RT7, which is advertising a good route to external net- work N12. 3.5. IP subnetting support OSPF attaches an IP address mask to each advertised route. The mask indicates the range of addresses being described by the particular route. For example, a summary advertisement for the destination 128.185.0.0 with a mask of 0xffff0000 actually is describing a single route to the collection of destinations 128.185.0.0 - 128.185.255.255. Similarly, host routes are always advertised with a mask of 0xffffffff, indicating the presence of only a single destination. Including the mask with each advertised destination enables the implementation of what is commonly referred to as variable- length subnet masks. This means that a single IP class A, B, or C network number can be broken up into many subnets of various [Moy] [Page 30] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 sizes. For example, the network 128.185.0.0 could be broken up into 64 variable-sized subnets: 16 subnets of size 4K, 16 sub- nets of size 256, and 32 subnets of size 8. Table 7 shows some of the resulting network addresses together with their masks: Network address IP address mask Subnet size _______________________________________________ 128.185.16.0 0xfffff000 4K 128.185.1.0 0xffffff00 256 128.185.0.8 0xfffffff8 8 Table 7: Some sample subnet sizes. There are many possible ways of dividing up a class A, B, and C network into variable sized subnets. The precise procedure for doing so is beyond the scope of this specification. The specif- ication however establishes the following guideline: When an IP packet is forwarded, it is always forwarded to the network that is the best match for the packet's destination. Here best match is synonymous with the longest or most specific match. For example, the default route with destination of 0.0.0.0 and mask 0x00000000 is always a match for every IP destination. Yet it is always less specific than any other match. Subnet masks must be assigned so that the best match for any IP destination is unambiguous. The OSPF area concept is modelled after an IP subnetted network. OSPF areas have been loosely defined to be a collection of net- works. In actuality, an OSPF area is specified to be a list of address ranges (see Section C.2 for more details). Each address range is defined as an [address,mask] pair. Many separate net- works may then be contained in a single address range, just as a subnetted network is composed of many separate subnets. Area border routers then summarize the area contents (for distribu- tion to the backbone) by advertising a single route for each address range. The cost of the route is the minimum cost to any of the networks falling in the specified range. For example, an IP subnetted network can be configured as a sin- gle OSPF area. In that case, the area would be defined as a single address range: a class A, B, or C network number along with its natural IP mask. Inside the area, any number of vari- able sized subnets could be defined. External to the area, a single route for the entire subnetted network would be [Moy] [Page 31] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 distributed, hiding even the fact that the network is subnetted at all. The cost of this route is the minimum of the set of costs to the component subnets. 3.6. Supporting stub areas In some Autonomous Systems, the majority of the topological database may consist of external advertisements. An OSPF exter- nal advertisement is usually flooded throughout the entire AS. However, OSPF allows certain areas to be configured as "stub areas". External advertisements are not flooded into/throughout stub areas; routing to AS external destinations in these areas is based on a (per-area) default only. This reduces the topo- logical database size, and therefore the memory requirements, for a stub area's internal routers. In order to take advantage of the OSPF stub area support, default routing must be used in the stub area. This is accom- plished as follows. One or more of the stub area's area border routers must advertise a default route into the stub area via summary advertisements. These summary defaults are flooded throughout the stub area, but no further. (For this reason these defaults pertain only to the particular stub area). These summary default routes will match any destination that is not explicitly reachable by an intra-area or inter-area path (i.e., AS external destinations). An area can be configured as stub when there is a single exit point from the area, or when the choice of exit point need not be made on a per-external-destination basis. For example, area 3 in Figure 6 could be configured as a stub area, because all external traffic must travel though its single area border router RT11. If area 3 were configured as a stub, router RT11 would advertise a default route for distribution inside area 3 (in a summary advertisement), instead of flooding the external advertisements for networks N12-N15 into/throughout the area. The OSPF protocol ensures that all routers belonging to an area agree on whether the area has been configured as a stub. This guarantees that no confusion will arise in the flooding of external advertisements. There are a couple of restrictions on the use of stub areas. Virtual links cannot be configured through stub areas. In addi- tion, AS boundary routers cannot be placed internal to stub areas. [Moy] [Page 32] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 3.7. Partitions of areas OSPF does not actively attempt to repair area partitions. When an area becomes partitioned, each component simply becomes a separate area. The backbone then performs routing between the new areas. Some destinations reachable via intra-area routing before the partition will now require inter-area routing. In the previous section, an area was described as a list of address ranges. Any particular address range must still be com- pletely contained in a single component of the area partition. This has to do with the way the area contents are summarized to the backbone. Also, the backbone itself must not partition. If it does, parts of the Autonomous System will become unreachable. Backbone partitions can be repaired by configuring virtual links (see Section 15). Another way to think about area partitions is to look at the Autonomous System graph that was introduced in Section 2. Area IDs can be viewed as colors for the graph's edges.[1] Each edge of the graph connects to a network, or is itself a point-to- point network. In either case, the edge is colored with the network's Area ID. A group of edges, all having the same color, and interconnected by vertices, represents an area. If the topology of the Auto- nomous System is intact, the graph will have several regions of color, each color being a distinct Area ID. When the AS topology changes, one of the areas may become parti- tioned. The graph of the AS will then have multiple regions of the same color (Area ID). The routing in the Autonomous System will continue to function as long as these regions of same color are connected by the single backbone region. [Moy] [Page 33] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 4. Functional Summary A separate copy of OSPF's basic routing algorithm runs in each area. Routers having interfaces to multiple areas run multiple copies of the algorithm. A brief summary of the routing algorithm follows. When a router starts, it first initializes the routing protocol data structures. The router then waits for indications from the lower- level protocols that its interfaces are functional. A router then uses the OSPF's Hello Protocol to acquire neighbors. The router sends Hello packets to its neighbors, and in turn receives their Hello packets. On broadcast and point-to-point net- works, the router dynamically detects its neighboring routers by sending its Hello packets to the multicast address AllSPFRouters. On non-broadcast networks, some configuration information is neces- sary in order to discover neighbors. On all multi-access networks (broadcast or non-broadcast), the Hello Protocol also elects a Designated router for the network. The router will attempt to form adjacencies with some of its newly acquired neighbors. Topological databases are synchronized between pairs of adjacent routers. On multi-access networks, the Designated Router determines which routers should become adjacent. Adjacencies control the distribution of routing protocol packets. Routing protocol packets are sent and received only on adjacencies. In particular, distribution of topological database updates proceeds along adjacencies. A router periodically advertises its state, which is also called link state. Link state is also advertised when a router's state changes. A router's adjacencies are reflected in the contents of its link state advertisements. This relationship between adjacen- cies and link state allows the protocol to detect dead routers in a timely fashion. Link state advertisements are flooded throughout the area. The flooding algorithm is reliable, ensuring that all routers in an area have exactly the same topological database. This database consists of the collection of link state advertisements received from each router belonging to the area. From this database each router calcu- lates a shortest-path tree, with itself as root. This shortest-path tree in turn yields a routing table for the protocol. [Moy] [Page 34] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 4.1. Inter-area routing The previous section described the operation of the protocol within a single area. For intra-area routing, no other routing information is pertinent. In order to be able to route to des- tinations outside of the area, the area border routers inject additional routing information into the area. This additional information is a distillation of the rest of the Autonomous System's topology. This distillation is accomplished as follows: Each area border router is by definition connected to the backbone. Each area border router summarizes the topology of its attached areas for transmission on the backbone, and hence to all other area border routers. A area border router then has complete topological information concerning the backbone, and the area summaries from each of the other area border routers. From this information, the router calculates paths to all destinations not contained in its attached areas. The router then advertises these paths to its attached areas. This enables the area's internal routers to pick the best exit router when forwarding traffic to destina- tions in other areas. 4.2. AS external routes Routers that have information regarding other Autonomous Systems can flood this information throughout the AS. This external routing information is distributed verbatim to every participat- ing router. There is one exception: external routing informa- tion is not flooded into "stub" areas (see Section 3.6). To utilize external routing information, the path to all routers advertising external information must be known throughout the AS (excepting the stub areas). For that reason, the locations of these AS boundary routers are summarized by the (non-stub) area border routers. 4.3. Routing protocol packets The OSPF protocol runs directly over IP, using IP protocol 89. OSPF does not provide any explicit fragmentation/reassembly sup- port. When fragmentation is necessary, IP fragmentation/reassembly is used. OSPF protocol packets have been designed so that large protocol packets can generally be split into several smaller protocol packets. This practice is recommended; IP fragmentation should be avoided whenever [Moy] [Page 35] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 possible. Routing protocol packets should always be sent with the IP TOS field set to 0. If at all possible, routing protocol packets should be given preference over regular IP data traffic, both when being sent and received. As an aid to accomplishing this, OSPF protocol packets should have their IP precedence field set to the value Internetwork Control (see [RFC 791]). All OSPF protocol packets share a common protocol header that is described in Appendix A. The OSPF packet types are listed below in Table 8. Their formats are also described in Appendix A. Type Packet name Protocol function __________________________________________________________ 1 Hello Discover/maintain neighbors 2 Database Description Summarize database contents 3 Link State Request Database download 4 Link State Update Database update 5 Link State Ack Flooding acknowledgment Table 8: OSPF packet types. OSPF's Hello protocol uses Hello packets to discover and main- tain neighbor relationships. The Database Description and Link State Request packets are used in the forming of adjacencies. OSPF's reliable update mechanism is implemented by the Link State Update and Link State Acknowledgment packets. Each Link State Update packet carries a set of new link state advertisements one hop further away from their point of origina- tion. A single Link State Update packet may contain the link state advertisements of several routers. Each advertisement is tagged with the ID of the originating router and a checksum of its link state contents. The five different types of OSPF link state advertisements are listed below in Table 9. As mentioned above, OSPF routing packets (with the exception of Hellos) are sent only over adjacencies. Note that this means that all protocol packets travel a single IP hop, except those that are sent over virtual adjacencies. The IP source address of an OSPF protocol packet is one end of a router adjacency, and the IP destination address is either the other end of the adja- cency or an IP multicast address. [Moy] [Page 36] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 LS Advertisement Advertisement description type name _____________________________________________________ 1 Router links Originated by all routers. advs. This advertisement describes the collected states of the router's interfaces to an area. Flooded throughout a single area only. _____________________________________________________ 2 Network links Originated for multi-access advs. networks by the Designated Router. This advertisement contains the list of routers connected to the network. Flooded throughout a single area only. _____________________________________________________ 3,4 Summary link Originated by area border advs. routers, and flooded through- out their associated area. Each summary link advertise- ment describes a route to a destination outside the area, yet still inside the AS (i.e., an inter-area route). Type 3 advertisements describe routes to networks. Type 4 advertise- ments describe routes to AS boundary routers. _____________________________________________________ 5 AS external Originated by AS boundary link advs. routers, and flooded through- out the AS. Each external advertisement describes a route to a destination in another Autonomous System. Default routes for the AS can also be described by AS external advertisements. Table 9: OSPF link state advertisements. [Moy] [Page 37] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 4.4. Basic implementation requirements An implementation of OSPF requires the following pieces of sys- tem support: Timers Two different kind of timers are required. The first kind, called single shot timers, fire once and cause a protocol event to be processed. The second kind, called interval timers, fire at continuous intervals. These are used for the sending of packets at regular intervals. A good example of this is the regular broadcast of Hello packets (on broad- cast networks). The granularity of both kinds of timers is one second. Interval timers should be implemented to avoid drift. In some router implementations, packet processing can affect timer execution. When multiple routers are attached to a single network, all doing broadcasts, this can lead to the synchronization of routing packets (which should be avoided). If timers cannot be implemented to avoid drift, small random amounts should be added to/subtracted from the timer interval at each firing. IP multicast Certain OSPF packets use IP multicast. Support for receiv- ing and sending IP multicasts, along with the appropriate lower-level protocol support, is required. These IP multi- cast packets never travel more than one hop. For informa- tion on IP multicast, see [RFC 1112]. Variable-length subnet support The router's IP protocol support must include the ability to divide a single IP class A, B, or C network number into many subnets of various sizes. This is commonly called variable-length subnetting; see Section 3.5 for details. Lower-level protocol support The lower level protocols referred to here are the network access protocols, such as the Ethernet data link layer. Indications must be passed from from these protocols to OSPF as the network interface goes up and down. For example, on an ethernet it would be valuable to know when the ethernet transceiver cable becomes unplugged. Non-broadcast lower-level protocol support Remember that non-broadcast networks are multi-access [Moy] [Page 38] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 networks such as a X.25 PDN. On these networks, the Hello Protocol can be aided by providing an indication to OSPF when an attempt is made to send a packet to a dead or non- existent router. For example, on a PDN a dead router may be indicated by the reception of a X.25 clear with an appropri- ate cause and diagnostic, and this information would be passed to OSPF. List manipulation primitives Much of the OSPF functionality is described in terms of its operation on lists of link state advertisements. For exam- ple, the advertisements that will be retransmitted to an adjacent router until acknowledged are described as a list. Any particular advertisement may be on many such lists. An OSPF implementation needs to be able to manipulate these lists, adding and deleting constituent advertisements as necessary. Tasking support Certain procedures described in this specification invoke other procedures. At times, these other procedures should be executed in-line, that is, before the current procedure is finished. This is indicated in the text by instructions to execute a procedure. At other times, the other pro- cedures are to be executed only when the current procedure has finished. This is indicated by instructions to schedule a task. 4.5. Optional OSPF capabilities The OSPF protocol defines several optional capabilities. A router indicates the optional capabilities that it supports in its OSPF Hello packets, Database Description packets and in its link state advertisements. This enables routers supporting a mix of optional capabilities to coexist in a single Autonomous System. Some capabilities must be supported by all routers attached to a specific area. In this case, a router will not accept a neighbor's Hello unless there is a match in reported capabili- ties (i.e., a capability mismatch prevents a neighbor relation- ship from forming). An example of this is the external routing capability (see below). Other capabilities can be negotiated during the database syn- chronization process. This is accomplished by specifying the optional capabilities in Database Description packets. A [Moy] [Page 39] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 capability mismatch with a neighbor is this case will result in only a subset of link state advertisements being exchanged between the two neighbors. The routing table build process can also be affected by the presence/absence of optional capabilities. For example, since the optional capabilities are reported in link state advertise- ments, routers incapable of certain functions can be avoided when building the shortest path tree. An example of this is the TOS routing capability (see below). The current OSPF optional capabilities are listed below. See Section A.2 for more information. External routing capability Entire OSPF areas can be configured as "stubs" (see Section 3.6). AS external advertisements will not be flooded into stub areas. This capability is represented by the E-bit in the OSPF options field (see Section A.2). In order to ensure consistent configuration of stub areas, all routers interfacing to such an area must have the E-bit clear in their Hello packets (see Sections 9.5 and 10.5). TOS capability All OSPF implementations must be able to calculate separate routes based on IP Type of Service. However, to save rout- ing table space and processing resources, an OSPF router can be configured to ignore TOS when forwarding packets. In this case, the router calculates routes for TOS 0 only. This capability is represented by the T-bit in the OSPF options field (see Section A.2). TOS-capable routers will attempt to avoid non-TOS-capable routers when calculating non-zero TOS paths. 5. Protocol Data Structures The OSPF protocol is described in this specification in terms of its operation on various protocol data structures. The following list comprises the top-level OSPF data structures. Any initialization that needs to be done is noted. Areas, OSPF interfaces and neigh- bors also have associated data structures that are described later in this specification. Router ID a 32-bit number that uniquely identifies this router in the AS. [Moy] [Page 40] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 One possible implementation strategy would be to use the smal- lest IP interface address belonging to the router. Area structures Each one of the areas to which the router is connected has its own data structure. This data structure describes the working of the basic algorithm. Remember that each area runs a separate copy of the basic algorithm. Backbone (area) structure The basic algorithm operates on the backbone as if it were an area. For this reason the backbone is represented as an area structure. Virtual links configured The virtual links configured with this router as one endpoint. In order to have configured virtual links, the router itself must be an area border router. Virtual links are identified by the Router ID of the other endpoint -- which is another area border router. These two endpoint routers must be attached to a common area, called the virtual link's transit area. Virtual links are part of the backbone, and behave as if they were unnumbered point-to-point networks between the two routers. A virtual link uses the intra-area routing of its transit area to forward packets. Virtual links are brought up and down through the building of the shortest-path trees for the transit area. List of external routes These are routes to destinations external to the Autonomous Sys- tem, that have been gained either through direct experience with another routing protocol (such as EGP), or through configuration information, or through a combination of the two (e.g., dynamic external information to be advertised by OSPF with configured metric). Any router having these external routes is called an AS boundary router. These routes are advertised by the router into the OSPF routing domain via AS external link advertisements. List of AS external link advertisements Part of the topological database. These have have originated from the AS boundary routers. They comprise routes to destina- tions external to the Autonomous System. Note that, if the router is itself an AS boundary router, some of these AS exter- nal link advertisements have been self originated. The routing table Derived from the topological database. Each destination that the router can forward to is represented by a cost and a set of paths. A path is described by its type and next hop. For more [Moy] [Page 41] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 information, see Section 11. TOS capability This item indicates whether the router will calculate separate routes based on TOS. This is a configurable parameter. For more information, see Sections 4.5 and 16.9. Figure 9 shows the collection of data structures present in a typi- cal router. The router pictured is RT10, from the map in Figure 6. Note that router RT10 has a virtual link configured to router RT11, with Area 2 as the link's transit area. This is indicated by the dashed line in Figure 9. When the virtual link becomes active, through the building of the shortest path tree for Area 2, it becomes an interface to the backbone (see the two backbone inter- faces depicted in Figure 9). 6. The Area Data Structure The area data structure contains all the information used to run the basic routing algorithm. Each area maintains its own topological database. A network belongs to a single area, and a router interface connects to a single area. Each router adjacency also belongs to a single area. The OSPF backbone has all the properties of an area. For that rea- son it is also represented by an area data structure. Note that some items in the structure apply differently to the backbone than to non-backbone areas. The area topological (or link state) database consists of the col- lection of router links, network links and summary links advertise- ments that have originated from the area's routers. This informa- tion is flooded throughout a single area only. The list of AS external link advertisements (see Section 5) is also considered to be part of each area's topological database. Area ID A 32-bit number identifying the area. 0 is reserved for the Area ID of the backbone. If assigning subnetted networks as separate areas, the IP network number could be used as the Area ID. List of component address ranges The address ranges that define the area. Each address range is specified by an [address,mask] pair and a status indication of either Advertise or DoNotAdvertise (see Section 12..4.3). Each [Moy] [Page 42] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 +----+ |RT10|------+ +----+ \+-------------+ / \ |Routing Table| / \ +-------------+ / \ +------+ / \ +--------+ |Area 2|---+ +---|Backbone| +------+***********+ +--------+ / \ * / \ / \ * / \ +---------+ +---------+ +------------+ +------------+ |Interface| |Interface| |Virtual Link| |Interface Ib| | to N6 | | to N8 | | to RT11 | +------------+ +---------+ +---------+ +------------+ | / \ | | | / \ | | | +--------+ +--------+ | +-------------+ +------------+ |Neighbor| |Neighbor| | |Neighbor RT11| |Neighbor RT6| | RT8 | | RT7 | | +-------------+ +------------+ +--------+ +--------+ | | +-------------+ |Neighbor RT11| +-------------+ Figure 9: Router RT10's Data structures network is then assigned to an area depending on the address range that it falls into (specified address ranges are not allowed to overlap). As an example, if an IP subnetted network is to be its own separate OSPF area, the area is defined to con- sist of a single address range - an IP network number with its natural (class A, B or C) mask. Associated router interfaces This router's interfaces connecting to the area. A router interface belongs to one and only one area (or the backbone). For the backbone structure this list includes all the virtual links. A virtual link is identified by the router ID of its other endpoint; its cost is the cost of the shortest intra-area path that exists between the two routers. [Moy] [Page 43] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 List of router links advertisements A router links advertisement is generated by each router in the area. It describes the state of the router's interfaces to the area. List of network links advertisements One network links advertisement is generated for each transit multi-access network in the area. A network links advertisement describes the set of routers currently connected to the network. List of summary links advertisements Summary link advertisements originate from the area's area border routers. They describe routes to destinations internal to the Autonomous System, yet external to the area. Shortest-path tree The shortest-path tree for the area, with this router itself as root. Derived from the collected router links and network links advertisements by the Dijkstra algorithm (see Section 16.1). Authentication type The type of authentication used for this area. Authentication types are defined in Appendix D. All OSPF packet exchanges are authenticated. Different authentication schemes may be used in different areas. Transit capability Set to TRUE if and only if there are one or more active virtual links using the area as a transit area. Equivalently, this parameter indicates whether the area can carry data traffic that neither originates nor terminates in the area itself. This parameter is calculated when the area's shortest-path tree is built (see Section 16.1, and is used as an input to a subsequent step of the routing table build process (see Section 16.3). External routing capability Whether AS external advertisements will be flooded into/throughout the area. This is a configurable parameter. If AS external advertisements are excluded from the area, the area is called a "stub". Internal to stub areas, routing to AS external destinations will be based solely on a default summary route. The backbone cannot be configured as a stub area. Also, virtual links cannot be configured through stub areas. For more information, see Section 3.6. StubDefaultCost If the area has been configured as a stub area, and the router itself is an area border router, then the StubDefaultCost [Moy] [Page 44] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 indicates the cost of the default summary link that the router should advertise into the area. There can be a separate cost configured for each IP TOS. See Section 12.4.3 for more infor- mation. Unless otherwise specified, the remaining sections of this document refer to the operation of the protocol in a single area. 7. Bringing Up Adjacencies OSPF creates adjacencies between neighboring routers for the purpose of exchanging routing information. Not every two neighboring routers will become adjacent. This section covers the generalities involved in creating adjacencies. For further details consult Sec- tion 10. 7.1. The Hello Protocol The Hello Protocol is responsible for establishing and maintain- ing neighbor relationships. It also ensures that communication between neighbors is bidirectional. Hello packets are sent periodically out all router interfaces. Bidirectional communi- cation is indicated when the router sees itself listed in the neighbor's Hello Packet. On multi-access networks, the Hello Protocol elects a Designated Router for the network. Among other things, the Designated Router controls what adjacencies will be formed over the network (see below). The Hello Protocol works differently on broadcast networks, as compared to non-broadcast networks. On broadcast networks, each router advertises itself by periodically multicasting Hello Packets. This allows neighbors to be discovered dynamically. These Hello Packets contain the router's view of the Designated Router's identity, and the list of routers whose Hellos have been seen recently. On non-broadcast networks some configuration information is necessary for the operation of the Hello Protocol. Each router that may potentially become Designated Router has a list of all other routers attached to the network. A router, having Desig- nated Router potential, sends hellos to all other potential Designated Routers when its interface to the non-broadcast net- work first becomes operational. This is an attempt to find the [Moy] [Page 45] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 Designated Router for the network. If the router itself is elected Designated Router, it begins sending hellos to all other routers attached to the network. After a neighbor has been discovered, bidirectional communica- tion ensured, and (if on a multi-access network) a Designated Router elected, a decision is made regarding whether or not an adjacency should be formed with the neighbor (see Section 10.4). An attempt is always made to establish adjacencies over point- to-point networks and virtual links. The first step in bringing up an adjacency is to synchronize the neighbors' topological databases. This is covered in the next section. 7.2. The Synchronization of Databases In an SPF-based routing algorithm, it is very important for all routers' topological databases to stay synchronized. OSPF sim- plifies this by requiring only adjacent routers to remain syn- chronized. The synchronization process begins as soon as the routers attempt to bring up the adjacency. Each router describes its database by sending a sequence of Database Description packets to its neighbor. Each Database Description Packet describes a set of link state advertisements belonging to the database. When the neighbor sees a link state advertisement that is more recent than its own database copy, it makes a note that this newer advertisement should be requested. This sending and receiving of Database Description packets is called the "Database Exchange Process". During this process, the two routers form a master/slave relationship. Each Database Description Packet has a sequence number. Database Description Packets sent by the master (polls) are acknowledged by the slave through echoing of the sequence number. Both polls and their responses contain summaries of link state data. The master is the only one allowed to retransmit Database Description Packets. It does so only at fixed intervals, the length of which is the configured constant RxmtInterval. Each Database Description contains an indication that there are more packets to follow --- the M-bit. The Database Exchange Process is over when a router has received and sent Database Description Packets with the M-bit off. During and after the Database Exchange Process, each router has a list of those link state advertisements for which the neighbor has more up-to-date instances. These advertisements are requested in Link State Request Packets. Link State Request [Moy] [Page 46] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 packets that are not satisfied are retransmitted at fixed inter- vals of time RxmtInterval. When the Database Description Pro- cess has completed and all Link State Requests have been satis- fied, the databases are deemed synchronized and the routers are marked fully adjacent. At this time the adjacency is fully functional and is advertised in the two routers' link state advertisements. The adjacency is used by the flooding procedure as soon as the Database Exchange Process begins. This simplifies database syn- chronization, and guarantees that it finishes in a predictable period of time. 7.3. The Designated Router Every multi-access network has a Designated Router. The Desig- nated Router performs two main functions for the routing proto- col: o The Designated Router originates a network links advertise- ment on behalf of the network. This advertisement lists the set of routers (including the Designated Router itself) currently attached to the network. The Link State ID for this advertisement (see Section 12.1.4) is the IP interface address of the Designated Router. The IP network number can then be obtained by using the subnet/network mask. o The Designated router becomes adjacent to all other routers on the network. Since the link state databases are syn- chronized across adjacencies (through adjacency bring-up and then the flooding procedure), the Designated Router plays a central part in the synchronization process. The Designated Router is elected by the Hello Protocol. A router's Hello Packet contains its Router Priority, which is configurable on a per-interface basis. In general, when a router's interface to a network first becomes functional, it checks to see whether there is currently a Designated Router for the network. If there is, it accepts that Designated Router, regardless of its Router Priority. (This makes it harder to predict the identity of the Designated Router, but ensures that the Designated Router changes less often. See below.) Other- wise, the router itself becomes Designated Router if it has the highest Router Priority on the network. A more detailed (and more accurate) description of Designated Router election is presented in Section 9.4. [Moy] [Page 47] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 The Designated Router is the endpoint of many adjacencies. In order to optimize the flooding procedure on broadcast networks, the Designated Router multicasts its Link State Update Packets to the address AllSPFRouters, rather than sending separate pack- ets over each adjacency. Section 2 of this document discusses the directed graph representation of an area. Router nodes are labelled with their Router ID. Broadcast network nodes are actually labelled with the IP address of their Designated Router. It follows that when the Designated Router changes, it appears as if the network node on the graph is replaced by an entirely new node. This will cause the network and all its attached routers to originate new link state advertisements. Until the topological databases again converge, some temporary loss of connectivity may result. This may result in ICMP unreachable messages being sent in response to data traffic. For that reason, the Designated Router should change only infrequently. Router Priorities should be configured so that the most dependable router on a network eventually becomes Designated Router. 7.4. The Backup Designated Router In order to make the transition to a new Designated Router smoother, there is a Backup Designated Router for each multi- access network. The Backup Designated Router is also adjacent to all routers on the network, and becomes Designated Router when the previous Designated Router fails. If there were no Backup Designated Router, when a new Designated Router became necessary, new adjacencies would have to be formed between the router and all other routers attached to the network. Part of the adjacency forming process is the synchronizing of topologi- cal databases, which can potentially take quite a long time. During this time, the network would not be available for transit data traffic. The Backup Designated obviates the need to form these adjacencies, since they already exist. This means the period of disruption in transit traffic lasts only as long as it take to flood the new link state advertisements (which announce the new Designated Router). The Backup Designated Router does not generate a network links advertisement for the network. (If it did, the transition to a new Designated Router would be even faster. However, this is a tradeoff between database size and speed of convergence when the Designated Router disappears.) The Backup Designated Router is also elected by the Hello [Moy] [Page 48] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 Protocol. Each Hello Packet has a field that specifies the Backup Designated Router for the network. In some steps of the flooding procedure, the Backup Designated Router plays a passive role, letting the Designated Router do more of the work. This cuts down on the amount of local routing traffic. See Section 13.3 for more information. 7.5. The graph of adjacencies An adjacency is bound to the network that the two routers have in common. If two routers have multiple networks in common, they may have multiple adjacencies between them. One can picture the collection of adjacencies on a network as forming an undirected graph. The vertices consist of routers, with an edge joining two routers if they are adjacent. The graph of adjacencies describes the flow of routing protocol packets, and in particular Link State Updates, through the Auto- nomous System. Two graphs are possible, depending on whether the common network is multi-access. On physical point-to-point networks (and vir- tual links), the two routers joined by the network will be adja- cent after their databases have been synchronized. On multi- access networks, both the Designated Router and the Backup Designated Router are adjacent to all other routers attached to the network, and these account for all adjacencies. These graphs are shown in Figure 10. It is assumed that router RT7 has become the Designated Router, and router RT3 the Backup Designated Router, for the network N2. The Backup Designated Router performs a lesser function during the flooding procedure than the Designated Router (see Section 13.3). This is the rea- son for the dashed lines connecting the Backup Designated Router RT3. 8. Protocol Packet Processing This section discusses the general processing of routing protocol packets. It is very important that the router topological databases remain synchronized. For this reason, routing protocol packets should get preferential treatment over ordinary data packets, both in sending and receiving. Routing protocol packets are sent along adjacencies only (with the [Moy] [Page 49] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 +---+ +---+ |RT1|------------|RT2| o---------------o +---+ N1 +---+ RT1 RT2 RT7 o---------+ +---+ +---+ +---+ /|\ | |RT7| |RT3| |RT4| / | \ | +---+ +---+ +---+ / | \ | | | | / | \ | +-----------------------+ RT5o RT6o oRT4 | | | N2 * * * | +---+ +---+ * * * | |RT5| |RT6| * * * | +---+ +---+ *** | o---------+ RT3 Figure 10: The graph of adjacencies exception of Hello packets, which are used to discover the adjacen- cies). This means that all protocol packets travel a single IP hop, except those sent over virtual links. All routing protocol packets begin with a standard header. The sec- tions below give the details on how to fill in and verify this stan- dard header. Then, for each packet type, the section is listed that gives more details on that particular packet type's processing. 8.1. Sending protocol packets When a router sends a routing protocol packet, it fills in the fields of that standard header as follows. For more details on the header format consult Section A.3.1: Version # Set to 2, the version number of the protocol as documented in this specification. Packet type The type of OSPF packet, such as Link state Update or Hello [Moy] [Page 50] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 Packet. Packet length The length of the entire OSPF packet in bytes, including the standard header. Router ID The identity of the router itself (who is originating the packet). Area ID The area that the packet is being sent into. Checksum The standard IP 16-bit one's complement checksum of the entire OSPF packet, excluding the 64-bit authentication field. This checksum should be calculated before handing the packet to the appropriate authentication procedure. Autype and Authentication Each OSPF packet exchange is authenticated. Authentication types are assigned by the protocol and documented in Appen- dix D. A different authentication scheme can be used for each OSPF area. The 64-bit authentication field is set by the appropriate authentication procedure (determined by Autype). This procedure should be the last called when forming the packet to be sent. The setting of the authenti- cation field is determined by the packet contents and the authentication key (which is configurable on a per-interface basis). The IP destination address for the packet is selected as fol- lows. On physical point-to-point networks, the IP destination is always set to the the address AllSPFRouters. On all other network types (including virtual links), the majority of OSPF packets are sent as unicasts, i.e., sent directly to the other end of the adjacency. In this case, the IP destination is just the neighbor IP address associated with the other end of the adjacency (see Section 10). The only packets not sent as uni- casts are on broadcast networks; on these networks Hello packets are sent to the multicast destination AllSPFRouters, the Desig- nated Router and its Backup send both Link State Update Packets and Link State Acknowledgment Packets to the multicast address AllSPFRouters, while all other routers send both their Link State Update and Link State Acknowledgment Packets to the multi- cast address AllDRouters. [Moy] [Page 51] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 Retransmissions of Link State Update packets are ALWAYS sent as unicasts. The IP source address should be set to the IP address of the sending interface. Interfaces to unnumbered point-to-point net- works have no associated IP address. On these interfaces, the IP source should be set to any of the other IP addresses belong- ing to the router. For this reason, there must be at least one IP address assigned to the router.[2] Note that, for most pur- poses, virtual links act precisely the same as unnumbered point-to-point networks. However, each virtual link does have an interface IP address (discovered during the routing table build process) which is used as the IP source when sending pack- ets over the virtual link. For more information on the format of specific packet types, consult the sections listed in Table 10. Type Packet name detailed section (transmit) _________________________________________________________ 1 Hello Section 9.5 2 Database description Section 10.8 3 Link state request Section 10.9 4 Link state update Section 13.3 5 Link state ack Section 13.5 Table 10: Sections describing packet transmission. 8.2. Receiving protocol packets Whenever a protocol packet is received by the router it is marked with the interface it was received on. For routers that have virtual links configured, it may not be immediately obvious which interface to associate the packet with. For example, con- sider the router RT11 depicted in Figure 6. If RT11 receives an OSPF protocol packet on its interface to network N8, it may want to associate the packet with the interface to area 2, or with the virtual link to router RT10 (which is part of the backbone). In the following, we assume that the packet is initially associ- ated with the non-virtual link.[3] In order for the packet to be accepted at the IP level, it must pass a number of tests, even before the packet is passed to OSPF [Moy] [Page 52] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 for processing: o The IP checksum must be correct. o The packet's IP destination address must be the IP address of the receiving interface, or one of the IP multicast addresses AllSPFRouters or AllDRouters. o The IP protocol specified must be OSPF (89). o Locally originated packets should not be passed on to OSPF. That is, the source IP address should be examined to make sure this is not a multicast packet that the router itself generated. Next, the OSPF packet header is verified. The fields specified in the header must match those configured for the receiving interface. If they do not, the packet should be discarded: o The version number field must specify protocol version 2. o The 16-bit checksum of the OSPF packet's contents must be verified. Remember that the 64-bit authentication field must be excluded from the checksum calculation. o The Area ID found in the OSPF header must be verified. If both of the following cases fail, the packet should be dis- carded. The Area ID specified in the header must either: (1) Match the Area ID of the receiving interface. In this case, the packet has been sent over a single hop. Therefore, the packet's IP source address must be on the same network as the receiving interface. This can be determined by comparing the packet's IP source address to the interface's IP address, after masking both addresses with the interface mask. (2) Indicate the backbone. In this case, the packet has been sent over a virtual link. The receiving router must be an area border router, and the router ID speci- fied in the packet (the source router) must be the other end of a configured virtual link. The receiving inter- face must also attach to the virtual link's configured transit area. If all of these checks succeed, the packet is accepted and is from now on associated with [Moy] [Page 53] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 the virtual link (and the backbone area). o Packets whose IP destination is AllDRouters should only be accepted if the state of the receiving interface is DR or Backup (see Section 9.1). o The Authentication type specified must match the authentica- tion type specified for the associated area. Next, the packet must be authenticated. This depends on the authentication type specified (see Appendix D). The authentica- tion procedure may use an Authentication key, which can be con- figured on a per-interface basis. If the authentication fails, the packet should be discarded. If the packet type is Hello, it should then be further processed by the Hello Protocol (see Section 10.5). All other packet types are sent/received only on adjacencies. This means that the packet must have been sent by one of the router's active neighbors. If the receiving interface is a multi-access network (either broadcast or non-broadcast) the sender is identified by the IP source address found in the packet's IP header. If the receiving interface is a point-to-point link or a virtual link, the sender is identified by the Router ID (source router) found in the packet's OSPF header. The data structure associated with the receiving interface contains the list of active neighbors. Packets not matching any active neighbor are discarded. At this point all received protocol packets are associated with an active neighbor. For the further input processing of specific packet types, consult the sections listed in Table 11. Type Packet name detailed section (receive) ________________________________________________________ 1 Hello Section 10.5 2 Database description Section 10.6 3 Link state request Section 10.7 4 Link state update Section 13 5 Link state ack Section 13.7 Table 11: Sections describing packet reception. [Moy] [Page 54] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 9. The Interface Data Structure An OSPF interface is the connection between a router and a network. There is a single OSPF interface structure for each attached net- work; each interface structure has at most one IP interface address (see below). The support for multiple addresses on a single network is a matter for future consideration. An OSPF interface can be considered to belong to the area that con- tains the attached network. All routing protocol packets originated by the router over this interface are labelled with the interface's Area ID. One or more router adjacencies may develop over an inter- face. A router's link state advertisements reflect the state of its interfaces and their associated adjacencies. The following data items are associated with an interface. Note that a number of these items are actually configuration for the attached network; those items must be the same for all routers con- nected to the network. Type The kind of network to which the interface attaches. Its value is either broadcast, non-broadcast yet still multi-access, point-to-point or virtual link. State The functional level of an interface. State determines whether or not full adjacencies are allowed to form over the interface. State is also reflected in the router's link state advertise- ments. IP interface address The IP address associated with the interface. This appears as the IP source address in all routing protocol packets originated over this interface. Interfaces to unnumbered point-to-point networks do not have an associated IP address. IP interface mask This indicates the portion of the IP interface address that identifies the attached network. This is often referred to as the subnet mask. Masking the IP interface address with this value yields the IP network number of the attached network. Area ID The Area ID to which the attached network belongs. All routing protocol packets originating from the interface are labelled with this Area ID. [Moy] [Page 55] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 HelloInterval The length of time, in seconds, between the Hello packets that the router sends on the interface. Advertised in Hello packets sent out this interface. RouterDeadInterval The number of seconds before the router's neighbors will declare it down, when they stop hearing the router's hellos. Advertised in Hello packets sent out this interface. InfTransDelay The estimated number of seconds it takes to transmit a Link State Update Packet over this interface. Link state advertise- ments contained in the update packet will have their age incre- mented by this amount before transmission. This value should take into account transmission and propagation delays; it must be greater than zero. Router Priority An 8-bit unsigned integer. When two routers attached to a net- work both attempt to become Designated Router, the one with the highest Router Priority takes precedence. A router whose Router Priority is set to 0 is ineligible to become Designated Router on the attached network. Advertised in Hello packets sent out this interface. Hello Timer An interval timer that causes the interface to send a Hello packet. This timer fires every HelloInterval seconds. Note that on non-broadcast networks a separate Hello packet is sent to each qualified neighbor. Wait Timer A single shot timer that causes the interface to exit the Wait- ing state, and as a consequence select a Designated Router on the network. The length of the timer is RouterDeadInterval seconds. List of neighboring routers The other routers attached to this network. On multi-access networks, this list is formed by the Hello Protocol. Adjacen- cies will be formed to some of these neighbors. The set of adjacent neighbors can be determined by an examination of all of the neighbors' states. Designated Router The Designated Router selected for the attached network. The Designated Router is selected on all multi-access networks by [Moy] [Page 56] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 the Hello Protocol. Two pieces of identification are kept for the Designated Router: its Router ID and its interface IP address on the network. The Designated Router advertises link state for the network. The network link state advertisement is labelled with the Designated Router's IP address. This item is initialized to 0, which indicates the lack of a Designated Router. Backup Designated Router The Backup Designated Router is also selected on all multi- access networks by the Hello Protocol. All routers on the attached network become adjacent to both the Designated Router and the Backup Designated Router. The Backup Designated Router becomes Designated Router when the current Designated Router fails. Initialized to 0 indicating the lack of a Backup Desig- nated Router. Interface output cost(s) The cost of sending a packet on the interface, expressed in the link state metric. This is advertised as the link cost for this interface in the router links advertisement. There may be a separate cost for each IP Type of Service. The cost of an interface must be greater than zero. RxmtInterval The number of seconds between link state advertisement retransmissions, for adjacencies belonging to this interface. Also used when retransmitting Database Description and Link State Request Packets. Authentication key This configured data allows the authentication procedure to gen- erate and/or verify the authentication field in the OSPF header. The authentication key can be configured on a per-interface basis. For example, if the authentication type indicates simple password, the authentication key would be a 64-bit password. This key would be inserted directly into the OSPF header when originating routing protocol packets, and there could be a separate password for each network. 9.1. Interface states The various states that router interface may attain is docu- mented in this section. The states are listed in order of pro- gressing functionality. For example, the inoperative state is listed first, followed by a list of intermediate states before the final, fully functional state is achieved. The [Moy] [Page 57] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 specification makes use of this ordering by sometimes making references such as "those interfaces in state greater than X". Figure 11 shows the graph of interface state changes. The arcs of the graph are labelled with the event causing the state change. These events are documented in Section 9.2. The inter- face state machine is described in more detail in Section 9.3. Down This is the initial interface state. In this state, the lower-level protocols have indicated that the interface is unusable. No protocol traffic at all will be sent or received on such a interface. In this state, interface parameters should be set to their initial values. All interface timers should be disabled, and there should be no adjacencies associated with the interface. +----+ UnloopInd +--------+ |Down|<--------------|Loopback| +----+ +--------+ | |InterfaceUp +-------+ | +--------------+ |Waiting|<-+-------------->|Point-to-point| +-------+ +--------------+ | WaitTimer|BackupSeen | | | NbrChg +------+ +-+<---------------- +-------+ |Backup|<----------|?|----------------->|DROther| +------+---------->+-+<-----+ +-------+ NbrChg | | | |NbrChg | | | +--+ +---->|DR| +--+ Figure 11: Interface State changes In addition to the state transitions pictured, Event InterfaceDown always forces Down State, and Event LoopInd always forces Loopback State [Moy] [Page 58] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 Loopback In this state, the router's interface to the network is looped back. The interface may be looped back in hardware or software. The interface will be unavailable for regular data traffic. However, it may still be desirable to gain information on the quality of this interface, either through sending ICMP pings to the interface or through something like a bit error test. For this reason, IP packets may still be addressed to an interface in Loopback state. To facilitate this, such interfaces are advertised in router links advertisements as single host routes, whose destina- tion is the IP interface address.[4] Waiting In this state, the router is trying to determine the iden- tity of the Backup Designated Router for the network. To do this, the router monitors the Hellos it receives. The router is not allowed to elect a Backup Designated Router nor Designated Router until it transitions out of Waiting state. This prevents unnecessary changes of (Backup) Desig- nated Router. Point-to-point In this state, the interface is operational, and connects either to a physical point-to-point network or to a virtual link. Upon entering this state, the router attempts to form an adjacency with the neighboring router. Hellos are sent to the neighbor every HelloInterval seconds. DR Other The interface is to a multi-access network on which another router has been selected to be the Designated Router. In this state, the router itself has not been selected Backup Designated Router either. The router forms adjacencies to both the Designated Router and the Backup Designated Router (if they exist). Backup In this state, the router itself is the Backup Designated Router on the attached network. It will be promoted to Designated Router when the present Designated Router fails. The router establishes adjacencies to all other routers attached to the network. The Backup Designated Router per- forms slightly different functions during the Flooding Pro- cedure, as compared to the Designated Router (see Section 13.3). See Section 7.4 for more details on the functions performed by the Backup Designated Router. [Moy] [Page 59] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 DR In this state, this router itself is the Designated Router on the attached network. Adjacencies are established to all other routers attached to the network. The router must also originate a network links advertisement for the network node. The advertisement will contain links to all routers (including the Designated Router itself) attached to the network. See Section 7.3 for more details on the functions performed by the Designated Router. 9.2. Events causing interface state changes State changes can be effected by a number of events. These events are pictured as the labelled arcs in Figure 11. The label definitions are listed below. For a detailed explanation of the effect of these events on OSPF protocol operation, con- sult Section 9.3. Interface Up Lower-level protocols have indicated that the network inter- face is operational. This enables the interface to transi- tion out of Down state. On virtual links, the interface operational indication is actually a result of the shortest path calculation (see Section 16.7). Wait Timer The Wait timer has fired, indicating the end of the waiting period that is required before electing a (Backup) Desig- nated Router. Backup seen The router has detected the existence or non-existence of a Backup Designated Router for the network. This is done in one of two ways. First, a Hello Packet may be received from a neighbor claiming to be itself the Backup Designated Router. Alternatively, a Hello Packet may be received from a neighbor claiming to be itself the Designated Router, and indicating that there is no Backup. In either case there must be bidirectional communication with the neighbor, i.e., the router must also appear in the neighbor's Hello Packet. This event signals an end to the Waiting state. Neighbor Change There has been a change in the set of bidirectional neigh- bors associated with the interface. The (Backup) Designated Router needs to be recalculated. The following neighbor changes lead to the Neighbor Change event. For an [Moy] [Page 60] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 explanation of neighbor states, see Section 10.1. o Bidirectional communication has been established to a neighbor. In other words, the state of the neighbor has transitioned to 2-Way or higher. o There is no longer bidirectional communication with a neighbor. In other words, the state of the neighbor has transitioned to Init or lower. o One of the bidirectional neighbors is newly declaring itself as either Designated Router or Backup Designated Router. This is detected through examination of that neighbor's Hello Packets. o One of the bidirectional neighbors is no longer declar- ing itself as Designated Router, or is no longer declar- ing itself as Backup Designated Router. This is again detected through examination of that neighbor's Hello Packets. o The advertised Router Priority for a bidirectional neighbor has changed. This is again detected through examination of that neighbor's Hello Packets. Loop Ind An indication has been received that the interface is now looped back to itself. This indication can be received either from network management or from the lower level pro- tocols. Unloop Ind An indication has been received that the interface is no longer looped back. As with the Loop Ind event, this indi- cation can be received either from network management or from the lower level protocols. Interface Down Lower-level protocols indicate that this interface is no longer functional. No matter what the current interface state is, the new interface state will be Down. 9.3. The Interface state machine A detailed description of the interface state changes follows. Each state change is invoked by an event (Section 9.2). This event may produce different effects, depending on the current [Moy] [Page 61] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 state of the interface. For this reason, the state machine below is organized by current interface state and received event. Each entry in the state machine describes the resulting new interface state and the required set of additional actions. When an interface's state changes, it may be necessary to ori- ginate a new router links advertisement. See Section 12.4 for more details. Some of the required actions below involve generating events for the neighbor state machine. For example, when an interface becomes inoperative, all neighbor connections associated with the interface must be destroyed. For more information on the neighbor state machine, see Section 10.3. State(s): Down Event: Interface Up New state: Depends on action routine Action: Start the interval Hello Timer, enabling the periodic sending of Hello packets out the interface. If the attached network is a physical point-to-point network or virtual link, the interface state transi- tions to Point-to-Point. Else, if the router is not eligible to become Designated Router the interface state transitions to DR other. Otherwise, the attached network is multi-access and the router is eligible to become Designated Router. In this case, in an attempt to discover the attached network's Designated Router the interface state is set to Waiting and the single shot Wait Timer is started. If in addition the attached network is non-broadcast, examine the configured list of neigh- bors for this interface and generate the neighbor event Start for each neighbor that is also eligible to become Designated Router. State(s): Waiting Event: Backup Seen New state: Depends upon action routine. [Moy] [Page 62] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 Action: Calculate the attached network's Backup Designated Router and Designated Router, as shown in Section 9.4. As a result of this calculation, the new state of the interface will be either DR other, Backup or DR. State(s): Waiting Event: Wait Timer New state: Depends upon action routine. Action: Calculate the attached network's Backup Designated Router and Designated Router, as shown in Section 9.4. As a result of this calculation, the new state of the interface will be either DR other, Backup or DR. State(s): DR Other, Backup or DR Event: Neighbor Change New state: Depends upon action routine. Action: Recalculate the attached network's Backup Designated Router and Designated Router, as shown in Section 9.4. As a result of this calculation, the new state of the interface will be either DR other, Backup or DR. State(s): Any State Event: Interface Down New state: Down Action: All interface variables are reset, and interface timers disabled. Also, all neighbor connections associated with the interface are destroyed. This is done by generating the event KillNbr on all asso- ciated neighbors (see Section 10.2). State(s): Any State [Moy] [Page 63] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 Event: Loop Ind New state: Loopback Action: Since this interface is no longer connected to the attached network the actions associated with the above Interface Down event are executed. State(s): Loopback Event: Unloop Ind New state: Down Action: No actions are necessary. For example, the inter- face variables have already been reset upon entering the Loopback state. Note that reception of an Interface Up event is necessary before the interface again becomes fully functional. 9.4. Electing the Designated Router This section describes the algorithm used for calculating a network's Designated Router and Backup Designated Router. This algorithm is invoked by the Interface state machine. The ini- tial time a router runs the election algorithm for a network, the network's Designated Router and Backup Designated Router are initialized to 0.0.0.0. This indicates the lack of both a Designated Router and a Backup Designated Router. The Designated Router election algorithm proceeds as follows: Call the router doing the calculation Router X. The list of neighbors attached to the network and having established bidirectional communication with Router X is examined. This list is precisely the collection of Router X's neighbors (on this network) whose state is greater than or equal to 2-Way (see Section 10.1). Router X itself is also considered to be on the list. Discard all routers from the list that are ineligible to become Designated Router. (Routers having Router Priority of 0 are ineligible to become Designated Router.) The following steps are then executed, considering only those routers that remain on the list: (1) Note the current values for the network's Designated Router and Backup Designated Router. This is used later for [Moy] [Page 64] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 comparison purposes. (2) Calculate the new Backup Designated Router for the network as follows. Only those routers on the list that have not declared themselves to be Designated Router are eligible to become Backup Designated Router. If one or more of these routers have declared themselves Backup Designated Router (i.e., they are currently listing themselves as Backup Designated Router, but not as Designated Router, in their Hello Packets) the one having highest Router Priority is declared to be Backup Designated Router. In case of a tie, the one having the highest Router ID is chosen. If no routers have declared themselves Backup Designated Router, choose the router having highest Router Priority, (again excluding those routers who have declared themselves Desig- nated Router), and again use the Router ID to break ties. (3) Calculate the new Designated Router for the network as fol- lows. If one or more of the routers have declared them- selves Designated Router (i.e., they are currently listing themselves as Designated Router in their Hello Packets) the one having highest Router Priority is declared to be Desig- nated Router. In case of a tie, the one having the highest Router ID is chosen. If no routers have declared themselves Designated Router, assign the Designated Router to be the same as the newly elected Backup Designated Router. (4) If Router X is now newly the Designated Router or newly the Backup Designated Router, or is now no longer the Designated Router or no longer the Backup Designated Router, repeat steps 2 and 3, and then proceed to step 5. For example, if Router X is now the Designated Router, when step 2 is repeated X will no longer be eligible for Backup Designated Router election. Among other things, this will ensure that no router will declare itself both Backup Designated Router and Designated Router.[5] (5) As a result of these calculations, the router itself may now be Designated Router or Backup Designated Router. See Sec- tions 7.3 and 7.4 for the additional duties this would entail. The router's interface state should be set accord- ingly. If the router itself is now Designated Router, the new interface state is DR. If the router itself is now Backup Designated Router, the new interface state is Backup. Otherwise, the new interface state is DR Other. (6) If the attached network is non-broadcast, and the router itself has just become either Designated Router or Backup [Moy] [Page 65] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 Designated Router, it must start sending hellos to those neighbors that are not eligible to become Designated Router (see Section 9.5.1). This is done by invoking the neighbor event Start for each neighbor having a Router Priority of 0. (7) If the above calculations have caused the identity of either the Designated Router or Backup Designated Router to change, the set of adjacencies associated with this interface will need to be modified. Some adjacencies may need to be formed, and others may need to be broken. To accomplish this, invoke the event AdjOK? on all neighbors whose state is at least 2-Way. This will cause their eligibility for adjacency to be reexamined (see Sections 10.3 and 10.4). The reason behind the election algorithm's complexity is the desire for an orderly transition from Backup Designated Router to Designated Router, when the current Designated Router fails. This orderly transition is ensured through the introduction of hysteresis: no new Backup router can be chosen until the old Backup accepts its new Designated Router responsibilities. The above procedure may elect the same router to be both Desig- nated Router and Backup Designated Router, although that router will never be the calculating router (Router X) itself. The elected Designated Router may not be the router having the highest Router Priority, nor will the Backup Designated Router necessarily have the second highest Router Priority. If Router X is not itself eligible to become Designated Router, it is pos- sible that neither a Backup Designated Router nor a Designated Router will be selected in the above procedure. Note also that if Router X is the only attached router that is eligible to become Designated Router, it will select itself as Designated Router and there will be no Backup Designated Router for the network. 9.5. Sending Hello packets Hello packets are sent out each functioning router interface. They are used to discover and maintain neighbor relation- ships.[6] On multi-access networks, hellos are also used to elect the Designated Router and Backup Designated Router, and in that way determine what adjacencies should be formed. The format of a Hello packet is detailed in Section A.3.2. The Hello Packet contains the router's Router Priority (used in choosing the Designated Router), and the interval between Hello [Moy] [Page 66] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 broadcasts (HelloInterval). The Hello Packet also indicates how often a neighbor must be heard from to remain active (Router- DeadInterval). Both HelloInterval and RouterDeadInterval must be the same for all routers attached to a common network. The Hello packet also contains the IP address mask of the attached network (Network Mask). On unnumbered point-to-point networks and on virtual links this field should be set to 0. The Hello packet's Options field describes the router's optional OSPF capabilities. There are currently two optional capabili- ties defined (see Sections 4.5 and A.2). The T-bit of the Options field should be set if the router is capable of calcu- lating separate routes for each IP TOS. The E-bit should be set if and only if the attached area is capable of processing AS external advertisements (i.e., it is not a stub area). If the E-bit is set incorrectly the neighboring routers will refuse to accept the Hello Packet (see Section 10.5). The rest of the Hello Packet's Options field should be set to zero. In order to ensure two-way communication between adjacent routers, the Hello packet contains the list of all routers from which hellos have been seen recently. The Hello packet also contains the router's current choice for Designated Router and Backup Designated Router. A value of 0 in these fields means that one has not yet been selected. On broadcast networks and physical point-to-point networks, Hello packets are sent every HelloInterval seconds to the IP multicast address AllSPFRouters. On virtual links, Hello pack- ets are sent as unicasts (addressed directly to the other end of the virtual link) every HelloInterval seconds. On non-broadcast networks, the sending of Hello packets is more complicated. This will be covered in the next section. 9.5.1. Sending Hello packets on non-broadcast networks Static configuration information is necessary in order for the Hello Protocol to function on non-broadcast networks (see Section C.5). Every attached router which is eligible to become Designated Router has a configured list of all of its neighbors on the network. Each listed neighbor is labelled with its Designated Router eligibility. The interface state must be at least Waiting for any hellos to be sent. Hellos are then sent directly (as unicasts) to some subset of a router's neighbors. Sometimes an hello is sent periodically on a timer; at other times it is sent as a [Moy] [Page 67] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 response to a received hello. A router's hello-sending behavior varies depending on whether the router itself is eligible to become Designated Router. If the router is eligible to become Designated Router, it must periodically send hellos to all neighbors that are also eligible. In addition, if the router is itself the Desig- nated Router or Backup Designated Router, it must also send periodic hellos to all other neighbors. This means that any two eligible routers are always exchanging hellos, which is necessary for the correct operation of the Designated Router election algorithm. To minimize the number of hellos sent, the number of eligible routers on a non-broadcast network should be kept small. If the router is not eligible to become Designated Router, it must periodically send hellos to both the Designated Router and the Backup Designated Router (if they exist). It must also send an hello in reply to an hello received from any eligible neighbor (other than the current Designated Router and Backup Designated Router). This is needed to establish an initial bidirectional relationship with any potential Designated Router. When sending Hello packets periodically to any neighbor, the interval between hellos is determined by the neighbor's state. If the neighbor is in state Down, hellos are sent every PollInterval seconds. Otherwise, hellos are sent every HelloInterval seconds. 10. The Neighbor Data Structure An OSPF router converses with its neighboring routers. Each separate conversation is described by a "neighbor data structure". Each conversation is bound to a particular OSPF router interface, and is identified either by the neighboring router's OSPF router ID or by its Neighbor IP address (see below). Thus if the OSPF router and another router have multiple attached networks in common, multi- ple conversations ensue, each described by a unique neighbor data structure. Each separate conversation is loosely referred to in the text as being a separate "neighbor". The neighbor data structure contains all information pertinent to the forming or formed adjacency between the two neighbors. (How- ever, remember that not all neighbors become adjacent.) An adja- cency can be viewed as a highly developed conversation between two routers. [Moy] [Page 68] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 State The functional level of the neighbor conversation. This is described in more detail in Section 10.1. Inactivity Timer A single shot timer whose firing indicates that no Hello Packet has been seen from this neighbor recently. The length of the timer is RouterDeadInterval seconds. Master/Slave When the two neighbors are exchanging databases, they form a Master Slave relationship. The Master sends the first Database Description Packet, and is the only part that is allowed to retransmit. The slave can only respond to the master's Database Description Packets. The master/slave relationship is nego- tiated in state ExStart. Sequence Number A 32-bit number identifying individual Database Description packets. When the neighbor state ExStart is entered, the sequence number should be set to a value not previously seen by the neighboring router. One possible scheme is to use the machine's time of day counter. The sequence number is then incremented by the master with each new Database Description packet sent. The slave's sequence number indicates the last packet received from the master. Only one packet is allowed outstanding at a time. Neighbor ID The OSPF Router ID of the neighboring router. The neighbor ID is learned when Hello packets are received from the neighbor, or is configured if this is a virtual adjacency (see Section C.4). Neighbor priority The Router Priority of the neighboring router. Contained in the neighbor's Hello packets, this item is used when selecting the Designated Router for the attached network. Neighbor IP address The IP address of the neighboring router's interface to the attached network. Used as the Destination IP address when pro- tocol packets are sent as unicasts along this adjacency. Also used in router links advertisements as the Link ID for the attached network if the neighboring router is selected to be Designated Router (see Section 12.4.1). The neighbor IP address is learned when Hello packets are received from the neighbor. For virtual links, the neighbor IP address is learned during the routing table build process (see Section 15). [Moy] [Page 69] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 Neighbor Options The optional OSPF capabilities supported by the neighbor. Learned during the Database Exchange process (see Section 10.6). The neighbor's optional OSPF capabilities are also listed in its Hello packets. This enables received Hellos to be rejected (i.e., neighbor relationships will not even start to form) if there is a mismatch in certain crucial OSPF capabilities (see Section 10.5). The optional OSPF capabilities are documented in Section 4.5. Neighbor's Designated Router The neighbor's idea of the Designated Router. If this is the neighbor itself, this is important in the local calculation of the Designated Router. Defined only on multi-access networks. Neighbor's Backup Designated Router The neighbor's idea of the Backup Designated Router. If this is the neighbor itself, this is important in the local calculation of the Backup Designated Router. Defined only on multi-access networks. The next set of variables are lists of link state advertisements. These lists describe subsets of the area topological database. There can be five distinct types of link state advertisements in an area topological database: router links, network links, and type 3 and 4 summary links (all stored in the area data structure), and AS external links (stored in the global data structure). Link state retransmission list The list of link state advertisements that have been flooded but not acknowledged on this adjacency. These will be retransmitted at intervals until they are acknowledged, or until the adjacency is destroyed. Database summary list The complete list of link state advertisements that make up the area topological database, at the moment the neighbor goes into Database Exchange state. This list is sent to the neighbor in Database Description packets. Link state request list The list of link state advertisements that need to be received from this neighbor in order to synchronize the two neighbors' topological databases. This list is created as Database Description packets are received, and is then sent to the neigh- bor in Link State Request packets. The list is depleted as [Moy] [Page 70] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 appropriate Link State Update packets are received. 10.1. Neighbor states The state of a neighbor (really, the state of a conversation being held with a neighboring router) is documented in the fol- lowing sections. The states are listed in order of progressing functionality. For example, the inoperative state is listed first, followed by a list of intermediate states before the final, fully functional state is achieved. The specification makes use of this ordering by sometimes making references such as "those neighbors/adjacencies in state greater than X". Fig- ures 12 and 13 show the graph of neighbor state changes. The arcs of the graphs are labelled with the event causing the state change. The neighbor events are documented in Section 10.2. The graph in Figure 12 show the state changes effected by the Hello Protocol. The Hello Protocol is responsible for neighbor acquisition and maintenance, and for ensuring two way +----+ |Down| +----+ | | Start | +-------+ Hello | +---->|Attempt| Received | +-------+ | | +----+<-+ |HelloReceived |Init|<---------------+ +----+<--------+ | | |2-Way | |received |1-Way | | +-------+ | +-----+ |ExStart|<--------+------->|2-Way| +-------+ +-----+ Figure 12: Neighbor state changes (Hello Protocol) In addition to the state transitions pictured, Event KillNbr always forces Down State, Event InactivityTimer always forces Down State, Event LLDown always forces Down State [Moy] [Page 71] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 communication between neighbors. The graph in Figure 13 shows the forming of an adjacency. Not every two neighboring routers become adjacent (see Section 10.4). The adjacency starts to form when the neighbor is in state ExStart. After the two routers discover their master/slave status, the state transi- tions to Exchange. At this point the neighbor starts to be used in the flooding procedure, and the two neighboring routers begin synchronizing their databases. When this synchronization is finished, the neighbor is in state Full and we say that the two routers are fully adjacent. At this point the adjacency is listed in link state advertisements. For a more detailed description of neighbor state changes, together with the additional actions involved in each change, see Section 10.3. +-------+ |ExStart| +-------+ | NegDone| +->+--------+ |Exchange| +--+--------+ | Exchange| Done | +----+ | +-------+ |Full|<---------+----->|Loading| +----+<-+ +-------+ | LoadingDone | +------------------+ Figure 13: Neighbor state changes (Database Exchange) In addition to the state transitions pictured, Event SeqNumberMismatch forces Exstart state, Event BadLSReq forces Exstart state, Event 1-Way forces Init state, Event KillNbr always forces Down State, Event InactivityTimer always forces Down State, Event LLDown always forces Down State, Event AdjOK? leads to adjacency forming/breaking [Moy] [Page 72] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 Down This is the initial state of a neighbor conversation. It indicates that there has been no recent information received from the neighbor. On non-broadcast networks, Hello packets may still be sent to "Down" neighbors, although at a reduced frequency (see Section 9.5.1). Attempt This state is only valid for neighbors attached to non- broadcast networks. It indicates that no recent information has been received from the neighbor, but that a more con- certed effort should be made to contact the neighbor. This is done by sending the neighbor Hello packets at intervals of HelloInterval (see Section 9.5.1). Init In this state, an Hello packet has recently been seen from the neighbor. However, bidirectional communication has not yet been established with the neighbor (i.e., the router itself did not appear in the neighbor's Hello packet). All neighbors in this state (or higher) are listed in the Hello packets sent from the associated interface. 2-Way In this state, communication between the two routers is bidirectional. This has been assured by the operation of the Hello Protocol. This is the most advanced state short of beginning adjacency establishment. The (Backup) Desig- nated Router is selected from the set of neighbors in state 2-Way or greater. ExStart This is the first step in creating an adjacency between the two neighboring routers. The goal of this step is to decide which router is the master, and to decide upon the initial sequence number. Neighbor conversations in this state or greater are called adjacencies. Exchange In this state the router is describing its entire link state database by sending Database Description packets to the neighbor. Each Database Description Packet has a sequence number, and is explicitly acknowledged. Only one Database Description Packet is allowed outstanding at any one time. In this state, Link State Request Packets may also be sent asking for the neighbor's more recent advertisements. All adjacencies in Exchange state or greater are used by the flooding procedure. In fact, these adjacencies are fully [Moy] [Page 73] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 capable of transmitting and receiving all types of OSPF routing protocol packets. Loading In this state, Link State Request packets are sent to the neighbor asking for the more recent advertisements that have been discovered (but not yet received) in the Exchange state. Full In this state, the neighboring routers are fully adjacent. These adjacencies will now appear in router links and net- work links advertisements. 10.2. Events causing neighbor state changes State changes can be effected by a number of events. These events are shown in the labels of the arcs in Figures 12 and 13. The label definitions are as follows: Hello Received A Hello packet has been received from a neighbor. Start This is an indication that Hello Packets should now be sent to the neighbor at intervals of HelloInterval seconds. This event is generated only for neighbors associated with non- broadcast networks. 2-Way Received Bidirectional communication has been realized between the two neighboring routers. This is indicated by this router seeing itself in the other's Hello packet. NegotiationDone The Master/Slave relationship has been negotiated, and sequence numbers have been exchanged. This signals the start of the sending/receiving of Database Description pack- ets. For more information on the generation of this event, consult Section 10.8. Exchange Done Both routers have successfully transmitted a full sequence of Database Description packets. Each router now knows what parts of its link state database are out of date. For more information on the generation of this event, consult Section [Moy] [Page 74] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 10.8. BadLSReq A Link State Request has been received for a link state advertisement not contained in the database. This indicates an error in the synchronization process. Loading Done Link State Updates have been received for all out-of-date portions of the database. This is indicated by the Link state request list becoming empty after the Database Description Process has completed. AdjOK? A decision must be made (again) as to whether an adjacency should be established/maintained with the neighbor. This event will start some adjacencies forming, and destroy oth- ers. The following events cause well developed neighbors to revert to lesser states. Unlike the above events, these events may occur when the neighbor conversation is in any of a number of states. Seq Number Mismatch A Database Description packet has been received that either a) has an unexpected sequence number, b) unexpectedly has the Init bit set or c) has an Options field differing from the last Options field received in a Database Description packet. Any of these conditions indicate that some error has occurred during adjacency establishment. 1-Way An Hello packet has been received from the neighbor, in which this router is not mentioned. This indicates that communication with the neighbor is not bidirectional. KillNbr This is an indication that all communication with the neighbor is now impossible, forcing the neighbor to revert to Down state. Inactivity Timer The inactivity Timer has fired. This means that no Hello packets have been seen recently from the neighbor. The neighbor reverts to Down state. [Moy] [Page 75] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 LLDown This is an indication from the lower level protocols that the neighbor is now unreachable. For example, on an X.25 network this could be indicated by an X.25 clear indication with appropriate cause and diagnostic fields. This event forces the neighbor into Down state. 10.3. The Neighbor state machine A detailed description of the neighbor state changes follows. Each state change is invoked by an event (Section 10.2). This event may produce different effects, depending on the current state of the neighbor. For this reason, the state machine below is organized by current neighbor state and received event. Each entry in the state machine describes the resulting new neighbor state and the required set of additional actions. When an neighbor's state changes, it may be necessary to rerun the Designated Router election algorithm. This is determined by whether the interface Neighbor Change event is generated (see Section 9.2). Also, if the Interface is in DR state (the router is itself Designated Router), changes in neighbor state may cause a new network links advertisement to be originated (see Section 12.4). When the neighbor state machine needs to invoke the interface state machine, it should be done as a scheduled task (see Sec- tion 4.4). This simplifies things, by ensuring that neither state machine will be executed recursively. State(s): Down Event: Start New state: Attempt Action: Send an hello to the neighbor (this neighbor is always associated with a non-broadcast network) and start the inactivity timer for the neighbor. The timer's later firing would indicate that communica- tion with the neighbor was not attained. State(s): Attempt [Moy] [Page 76] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 Event: Hello Received New state: Init Action: Restart the inactivity timer for the neighbor, since the neighbor has now been heard from. State(s): Down Event: Hello Received New state: Init Action: Start the inactivity timer for the neighbor. The timer's later firing would indicate that the neigh- bor is dead. State(s): Init or greater Event: Hello Received New state: No state change. Action: Restart the inactivity timer for the neighbor, since the neighbor has again been heard from. State(s): Init Event: 2-Way Received New state: Depends upon action routine. Action: Determine whether an adjacency should be established with the neighbor (see Section 10.4). If not, the new neighbor state is 2-Way. Otherwise (an adjacency should be established) the neighbor state transitions to ExStart. Upon enter- ing this state, the router increments the sequence number for this neighbor. If this is the first time that an adjacency has been attempted, the sequence number should be assigned some unique value (like the time of day clock). It then declares itself master (sets the master/slave bit to master), and starts sending Database Description Packets, with [Moy] [Page 77] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 the initialize (I), more (M) and master (MS) bits set. This Database Description Packet should be otherwise empty. This Database Description Packet should be retransmitted at intervals of RxmtInterval until the next state is entered (see Section 10.8). State(s): ExStart Event: NegDone New state: Exchange Action: The router must list the contents of its entire area link state database in the neighbor Database summary list. The area link state database consists of the router links, network links and summary links con- tained in the area structure, along with the AS external links contained in the global structure. AS external link advertisements are omitted from a virtual neighbor's Database summary list. AS exter- nal advertisements are omitted from the Database summary list if the area has been configured as a stub (see Section 3.6). Advertisements whose age is equal to MaxAge are instead added to the neighbor's Link state retransmission list. A summary of the Database summary list will be sent to the neighbor in Database Description packets. Each Database Description Packet has a sequence number, and is explicitly acknowledged. Only one Database Descrip- tion Packet is allowed outstanding at any one time. For more detail on the sending and receiving of Database Description packets, see Sections 10.8 and 10.6. State(s): Exchange Event: Exchange Done New state: Depends upon action routine. Action: If the neighbor Link state request list is empty, the new neighbor state is Full. No other action is required. This is an adjacency's final state. Otherwise, the new neighbor state is Loading. Start (or continue) sending Link State Request packets to [Moy] [Page 78] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 the neighbor (see Section 10.9). These are requests for the neighbor's more recent advertisements (which were discovered but not yet received in the Exchange state). These advertisements are listed in the Link state request list associated with the neighbor. State(s): Loading Event: Loading Done New state: Full Action: No action required. This is an adjacency's final state. State(s): 2-Way Event: AdjOK? New state: Depends upon action routine. Action: Determine whether an adjacency should be formed with the neighboring router (see Section 10.4). If not, the neighbor state remains at 2-Way. Otherwise, transition the neighbor state to ExStart and perform the actions associated with the above state machine entry for state Init and event 2-Way Received. State(s): ExStart or greater Event: AdjOK? New state: Depends upon action routine. Action: Determine whether the neighboring router should still be adjacent. If yes, there is no state change and no further action is necessary. Otherwise, the (possibly partially formed) adjacency must be destroyed. The neighbor state transitions to 2-Way. The Link state retransmission list, Data- base summary list and Link state request list are cleared of link state advertisements. [Moy] [Page 79] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 State(s): Exchange or greater Event: Seq Number Mismatch New state: ExStart Action: The (possibly partially formed) adjacency is torn down, and then an attempt is made at reestablish- ment. The neighbor state first transitions to ExStart. The Link state retransmission list, Data- base summary list and Link state request list are cleared of link state advertisements. Then the router increments the sequence number for this neighbor, declares itself master (sets the master/slave bit to master), and starts sending Database Description Packets, with the initialize (I), more (M) and master (MS) bits set. This Data- base Description Packet should be otherwise empty (see Section 10.8). State(s): Exchange or greater Event: BadLSReq New state: ExStart Action: The action for event BadLSReq is exactly the same as for the neighbor event SeqNumberMismatch. The (pos- sibly partially formed) adjacency is torn down, and then an attempt is made at reestablishment. For more information, see the neighbor state machine entry that is invoked when event SeqNumberMismatch is generated in state Exchange or greater. State(s): Any state Event: KillNbr New state: Down Action: The Link state retransmission list, Database summary list and Link state request list are cleared of link state advertisements. Also, the inactivity timer is disabled. [Moy] [Page 80] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 State(s): Any state Event: LLDown New state: Down Action: The Link state retransmission list, Database summary list and Link state request list are cleared of link state advertisements. Also, the inactivity timer is disabled. State(s): Any state Event: Inactivity Timer New state: Down Action: The Link state retransmission list, Database summary list and Link state request list are cleared of link state advertisements. State(s): 2-Way or greater Event: 1-Way Received New state: Init Action: The Link state retransmission list, Database summary list and Link state request list are cleared of link state advertisements. State(s): 2-Way or greater Event: 2-Way received New state: No state change. Action: No action required. State(s): Init Event: 1-Way received [Moy] [Page 81] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 New state: No state change. Action: No action required. 10.4. Whether to become adjacent Adjacencies are established with some subset of the router's neighbors. Routers connected by point-to-point networks and virtual links always become adjacent. On multi-access networks, all routers become adjacent to both the Designated Router and the Backup Designated Router. The adjacency-forming decision occurs in two places in the neighbor state machine. First, when bidirectional communication is initially established with the neighbor, and secondly, when the identity of the attached network's (Backup) Designated Router changes. If the decision is made to not attempt an adja- cency, the state of the neighbor communication stops at 2-Way. An adjacency should be established with a (bidirectional) neigh- bor when at least one of the following conditions holds: o The underlying network type is point-to-point o The underlying network type is virtual link o The router itself is the Designated Router o The router itself is the Backup Designated Router o The neighboring router is the Designated Router o The neighboring router is the Backup Designated Router 10.5. Receiving Hello packets This section explains the detailed processing of a received Hello packet. (See Section A.3.2 for the format of Hello pack- ets.) The generic input processing of OSPF packets will have checked the validity of the IP header and the OSPF packet header. Next, the values of the Network Mask, HelloInt, and DeadInt fields in the received Hello packet must be checked against the values configured for the receiving interface. Any mismatch causes processing to stop and the packet to be dropped. In other words, the above fields are really describing the [Moy] [Page 82] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 attached network's configuration. Note that the value of the Network Mask field should not be checked in Hellos received on unnumbered serial lines or on virtual links. The receiving interface attaches to a single OSPF area (this could be the backbone). The setting of the E-bit found in the Hello Packet's option field must match this area's external routing capability. If AS external advertisements are not flooded into/throughout the area (i.e, the area is a "stub") the E-bit must be clear in received hellos, otherwise the E-bit must be set. A mismatch causes processing to stop and the packet to be dropped. The setting of the rest of the bits in the Hello Packet's option field should be ignored. At this point, an attempt is made to match the source of the Hello Packet to one of the receiving interface's neighbors. If the receiving interface is a multi-access network (either broad- cast or non-broadcast) the source is identified by the IP source address found in the Hello's IP header. If the receiving inter- face is a point-to-point link or a virtual link, the source is identified by the Router ID found in the Hello's OSPF packet header. The interface's current list of neighbors is contained in the interface's data structure. If a matching neighbor structure cannot be found, (i.e., this is the first time the neighbor has been detected), one is created. The initial state of a newly created neighbor is set to Down. When receiving an Hello Packet from a neighbor on a multi-access network (broadcast or non-broadcast), set the neighbor structure's Neighbor ID equal to the Router ID found in the packet's OSPF header. When receiving an Hello on a point-to- point network (but not on a virtual link) set the neighbor structure's Neighbor IP address to the packet's IP source address. Now the rest of the Hello Packet is examined, generating events to be given to the neighbor and interface state machines. These state machines are specified either to be executed or scheduled (see Section 4.4). For example, by specifying below that the neighbor state machine be executed in line, several neighbor state transitions may be effected by a single received Hello: o Each Hello Packet causes the neighbor state machine to be executed with the event Hello Received. o Then the list of neighbors contained in the Hello Packet is examined. If the router itself appears in this list, the [Moy] [Page 83] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 neighbor state machine should be executed with the event 2- Way Received. Otherwise, the neighbor state machine should be executed with the event 1-Way Received, and the process- ing of the packet stops. o Next, the Hello packet's Router Priority field is examined. If this field is different than the one previously received from the neighbor, the receiving interface's state machine is scheduled with the event NeighborChange. In any case, the Router Priority field in the neighbor data structure should be set accordingly. o Next the Designated Router field in the Hello Packet is examined. If the neighbor is both declaring itself to be Designated Router (Designated Router field = neighbor IP address) and the Backup Designated Router field in the packet is equal to 0.0.0.0 and the receiving interface is in state Waiting, the receiving interface's state machine is scheduled with the event BackupSeen. Otherwise, if the neighbor is declaring itself to be Designated Router and it had not previously, or the neighbor is not declaring itself Designated Router where it had previously, the receiving interface's state machine is scheduled with the event Neigh- borChange. In any case, the Designated Router item in the neighbor structure is set accordingly. o Finally, the Backup Designated Router field in the Hello Packet is examined. If the neighbor is declaring itself to be Backup Designated Router (Backup Designated Router field = neighbor IP address) and the receiving interface is in state Waiting, the receiving interface's state machine is scheduled with the event BackupSeen. Otherwise, if the neighbor is declaring itself to be Backup Designated Router and it had not previously, or the neighbor is not declaring itself Backup Designated Router where it had previously, the receiving interface's state machine is scheduled with the event NeighborChange. In any case, the Backup Designated Router item in the neighbor structure is set accordingly. 10.6. Receiving Database Description Packets This section explains the detailed processing of a received Database Description packet. The incoming Database Description Packet has already been associated with a neighbor and receiving interface by the generic input packet processing (Section 8.2). The further processing of the Database Description Packet depends on the neighbor state. If the neighbor's state is Down [Moy] [Page 84] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 or Attempt the packet should be ignored. Otherwise, if the state is: Init The neighbor state machine should be executed with the event 2-Way Received. This causes an immediate state change to either state 2-Way or state Exstart. The processing of the current packet should then continue in this new state. 2-Way The packet should be ignored. Database description packets are used only for the purpose of bringing up adjacencies.[7] ExStart If the received packet matches one of the following cases, then the neighbor state machine should be executed with the event NegotiationDone (causing the state to transition to Exchange), the packet's Options field should be recorded in the neighbor structure's Neighbor Options field and the packet should be accepted as next in sequence and processed further (see below). Otherwise, the packet should be ignored. o The initialize(I), more (M) and master(MS) bits are set, the contents of the packet are empty, and the neighbor's Router ID is larger than the router's own. In this case the router is now Slave. Set the master/slave bit to slave, and set the sequence number to that specified by the master. o The initialize(I) and master(MS) bits are off, the packet's sequence number equals the router's own sequence number (indicating acknowledgment) and the neighbor's Router ID is smaller than the router's own. In this case the router is Master. Exchange If the state of the MS-bit is inconsistent with the master/slave state of the connection, generate the neighbor event Seq Number Mismatch and stop processing the packet. Otherwise: o If the initialize(I) bit is set, generate the neighbor event Seq Number Mismatch and stop processing the packet. [Moy] [Page 85] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 o If the packet's Options field indicates a different set of optional OSPF capabilities than were previously received from the neighbor (recorded in the Neighbor Options field of the neighbor structure), generate the neighbor event Seq Number Mismatch and stop processing the packet. o If the router is master, and the packet's sequence number equals the router's own sequence number (this packet is the next in sequence) the packet should be accepted and its contents processed (below). o If the router is master, and the packet's sequence number is one less than the router's sequence number, the packet is a duplicate. Duplicates should be dis- carded by the master. o If the router is slave, and the packet's sequence number is one more than the router's own sequence number (this packet is the next in sequence) the packet should be accepted and its contents processed (below). o If the router is slave, and the packet's sequence number is equal to the router's sequence number, the packet is a duplicate. The slave must respond to duplicates by repeating the last Database Description packet that it sent. o Else, generate the neighbor event Seq Number Mismatch and stop processing the packet. Loading or Full In this state, the router has sent and received an entire sequence of Database Descriptions. The only packets received should be duplicates (see above). In particular, the packet's Options field should match the set of optional OSPF capabilities previously indicated by the neighbor (stored in the neighbor structure's neighbor Options field). Any other packets received, including the reception of a packet with the Initialize(I) bit set, should generate the neighbor event Seq Number Mismatch.[8] Duplicates should be discarded by the master. The slave must respond to dupli- cates by repeating the last Database Description packet that it sent. When the router accepts a received Database Description Packet as the next in sequence the packet contents are processed as [Moy] [Page 86] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 follows. For each link state advertisement listed, the advertisement's LS type is checked for validity. If the LS type is unknown (e.g., not one of the LS types 1-5 defined by this specification), or if this is a AS external advertisement (LS type = 5) and the neighbor is associated with a stub area, gen- erate the neighbor event Seq Number Mismatch and stop processing the packet. Otherwise, the router looks up the advertisement in its database to see whether it also has an instance of the link state advertisement. If it does not, or if the database copy is less recent (see Section 13.1), the link state advertisement is put on the Link state request list so that it can be requested (immediately or at some later time) in Link State Request Pack- ets. When the router accepts a received Database Description Packet as the next in sequence, it also performs the following actions, depending on whether it is master or slave: Master Increments the sequence number. If the router has already sent its entire sequence of Database Descriptions, and the just accepted packet has the more bit (M) set to 0, the neighbor event Exchange Done is generated. Otherwise, it should send a new Database Description to the slave. Slave Sets the sequence number to the sequence number appearing in the received packet. The slave must send a Database Description in reply. If the received packet has the more bit (M) set to 0, and the packet to be sent by the slave will have the M-bit set to 0 also, the neighbor event Exchange Done is generated. Note that the slave always gen- erates this event before the master. 10.7. Receiving Link State Request Packets This section explains the detailed processing of received Link State Request packets. Received Link State Request Packets specify a list of link state advertisements that the neighbor wishes to receive. Link state Request Packets should be accepted when the neighbor is in states Exchange, Loading, or Full. In all other states Link State Request Packets should be ignored. Each link state advertisement specified in the Link State Request packet should be located in the router's database, and [Moy] [Page 87] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 copied into Link State Update packets for transmission to the neighbor. These link state advertisements should NOT be placed on the Link state retransmission list for the neighbor. If a link state advertisement cannot be found in the database, some- thing has gone wrong with the synchronization procedure, and neighbor event BadLSReq should be generated. 10.8. Sending Database Description Packets This section describes how Database Description Packets are sent to a neighbor. The router's optional OSPF capabilities (see Section 4.5) are transmitted to the neighbor in the Options field of the Database Description packet. The router should maintain the same set of optional capabilities throughout the Database Exchange and flooding procedures. If for some reason the router's optional capabilities change, the Database Exchange procedure should be restarted by reverting to neighbor state ExStart. There are currently two optional capabilities defined. The T-bit should be set if and only if the router is capable of calculating separate routes for each IP TOS. The E-bit should be set if and only if the attached network belongs to a non-stub area. The rest of the Options field should be set to zero. The sending of Database Description packets depends on the neighbor's state. In state ExStart the router sends empty Data- base Description packets, with the initialize (I), more (M) and master (MS) bits set. These packets are retransmitted every RxmtInterval seconds. In state Exchange the Database Description Packets actually con- tain summaries of the link state information contained in the router's database. Each link state advertisement in the area's topological database (at the time the neighbor transitions into Exchange state) is listed in the neighbor Database summary list. When a new Database Description Packet is to be sent, the packet's sequence number is incremented, and the (new) top of the Database summary list is described by the packet. Items are removed from the Database summary list when the previous packet is acknowledged. In state Exchange, the determination of when to send a packet depends on whether the router is master or slave: Master Packets are sent when either a) the slave acknowledges the previous packet by echoing the sequence number or b) [Moy] [Page 88] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 RxmtInterval seconds elapse without an acknowledgment, in which case the previous packet is retransmitted. Slave Packets are sent only in response to packets received from the master. If the packet received from the master is new, a new packet is sent, otherwise the previous packet is resent. In states Loading and Full the slave must resend its last packet in response to duplicate packets received from the master. For this reason the slave must wait RouterDeadInterval seconds before freeing the last packet. Reception of a packet from the master after this interval will generate a Seq Number Mismatch neighbor event. 10.9. Sending Link State Request Packets In neighbor states Exchange or Loading, the Link state request list contains a list of those link state advertisements that need to be obtained from the neighbor. To request these adver- tisements, a router sends the neighbor the beginning of the Link state request list, packaged in a Link State Request packet. When the neighbor responds to these requests with the proper Link State Update packet(s), the Link state request list is truncated and a new Link State Request packet is sent. This process continues until the link state request list becomes empty. Unsatisfied Link State Requests are retransmitted at intervals of RxmtInterval. There should be at most one Link State Request packet outstanding at any one time. When the Link state request list becomes empty, and the neighbor state is Loading (i.e., a complete sequence of Database Descrip- tion packets has been received from the neighbor), the Loading Done neighbor event is generated. 10.10. An Example Figure 14 shows an example of an adjacency forming. Routers RT1 and RT2 are both connected to a broadcast network. It is assumed that RT2 is the Designated Router for the network, and that RT2 has a higher Router ID that router RT1. The neighbor state changes realized by each router are listed on [Moy] [Page 89] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 +---+ +---+ |RT1| |RT2| +---+ +---+ Down Down Hello(DR=0,seen=0) ------------------------------> Hello (DR=RT2,seen=RT1,...) Init <------------------------------ ExStart D-D (Seq=x,I,M,Master) ------------------------------> D-D (Seq=y,I,M,Master) ExStart <------------------------------ Exchange D-D (Seq=y,M,Slave) ------------------------------> D-D (Seq=y+1,M,Master) Exchange <------------------------------ D-D (Seq=y+1,M,Slave) ------------------------------> ... ... ... D-D (Seq=y+n, Master) <------------------------------ D-D (Seq=y+n, Slave) Loading ------------------------------> LS Request Full ------------------------------> LS Update <------------------------------ LS Request ------------------------------> LS Update <------------------------------ Full Figure 14: An adjacency bring-up example the sides of the figure. At the beginning of Figure 14, router RT1's interface to the network becomes operational. It begins sending hellos, although it doesn't know the identity of the Designated Router or of any other neighboring routers. Router RT2 hears this hello (moving the neighbor to Init state), and in its next hello indicates that it is itself the Designated Router and that it has heard [Moy] [Page 90] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 hellos from RT1. This in turn causes RT1 to go to state ExStart, as it starts to bring up the adjacency. RT1 begins by asserting itself as the master. When it sees that RT2 is indeed the master (because of RT2's higher Router ID), RT1 transitions to slave state and adopts its neighbor's sequence number. Database Description packets are then exchanged, with polls coming from the master (RT2) and responses from the slave (RT1). This sequence of Database Description Packets ends when both the poll and associated response has the M-bit off. In this example, it is assumed that RT2 has a completely up to date database. In that case, RT2 goes immediately into Full state. RT1 will go into Full state after updating the necessary parts of its database. This is done by sending Link State Request Packets, and receiving Link State Update Packets in response. Note that, while RT1 has waited until a complete set of Database Description Packets has been received (from RT2) before sending any Link State Request Packets, this need not be the case. RT1 could have interleaved the sending of Link State Request Packets with the reception of Database Description Pack- ets. 11. The Routing Table Structure The routing table data structure contains all the information neces- sary to forward an IP data packet toward its destination. Each routing table entry describes the collection of best paths to a par- ticular destination. When forwarding an IP data packet, the routing table entry providing the best match for the packet's IP destination is located. The matching routing table entry then provides the next hop towards the packet's destination. OSPF also provides for the existence of a default route (Destination ID = DefaultDestination). When the default route exists, it matches all IP destinations (although any other matching entry is a better match). Finding the routing table entry that best matches an IP destination is further described in Section 11.1. There is a single routing table in each router. Two sample routing tables are described in Sections 11.2 and 11.3. The building of the routing table is discussed in Section 16. The rest of this section defines the fields found in a routing table entry. The first set of fields describes the routing table entry's destination. [Moy] [Page 91] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 Destination Type The destination can be one of three types. Only the first type, Network, is actually used when forwarding IP data traffic. The other destinations are used solely as intermediate steps in the routing table build process. Network A range of IP addresses, to which IP data traffic may be forwarded. This includes IP networks (class A, B, or C), IP subnets, and single IP hosts. The default route also falls in this category. Area border router Routers that are connected to multiple OSPF areas. Such routers originate summary link advertisements. These rout- ing table entries are used when calculating the inter-area routes (see Section 16.2). These routing table entries may also be associated with configured virtual links. AS boundary router Routers that originate AS external link advertisements. These routing table entries are used when calculating the AS external routes (see Section 16.4). Destination ID The destination's identifier or name. This depends on the destination's type. For networks, the identifier is their asso- ciated IP address. For all other types, the identifier is the OSPF Router ID.[9] Address Mask Only defined for networks. The network's IP address together with its address mask defines a range of IP addresses. For IP subnets, the address mask is referred to as the subnet mask. For host routes, the mask is "all ones" (0xffffffff). Optional Capabilities When the destination is a router (either an area border router or an AS boundary router) this field indicates the optional OSPF capabilities supported by the destination router. The two optional capabilities currently defined by this specification are the ability to route based on IP TOS and the ability to pro- cess AS external advertisements. For a further discussion of OSPF's optional capabilities, see Section 4.5. The set of paths to use for a destination may vary based on IP Type of Service and the OSPF area to which the paths belong. This means [Moy] [Page 92] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 that there may be multiple routing table entries for the same desti- nation, depending on the values of the next two fields. Type of Service There can be a separate set of routes for each IP Type of Ser- vice. The encoding of TOS in OSPF link state advertisements is described in Section 12.3. Area This field indicates the area whose link state information has led to the routing table entry's collection of paths. This is called the entry's associated area. For sets of AS external paths, this field is not defined. For destinations of type "area border router", there may be separate sets of paths (and therefore separate routing table entries) associated with each of several areas. This will happen when two area border routers share multiple areas in common. For all other destination types, only the set of paths associated with the best area (the one providing the shortest route) is kept. The rest of the routing table entry describes the set of paths to the destination. The following fields pertain to the set of paths as a whole. In other words, each one of the paths contained in a routing table entry is of the same path-type and cost (see below). Path-type There are four possible types of paths used to route traffic to the destination, listed here in order of preference: intra-area, inter-area, type 1 external or type 2 external. Intra-area paths indicate destinations belonging to one of the router's attached areas. Inter-area paths are paths to destinations in other OSPF areas. These are discovered through the examination of received summary link advertisements. AS external paths are paths to destinations external to the AS. These are detected through the examination of received AS external link advertise- ments. Cost The link state cost of the path to the destination. For all paths except type 2 external paths this describes the entire path's cost. For Type 2 external paths, this field describes the cost of the portion of the path internal to the AS. This cost is calculated as the sum of the costs of the path's consti- tuent links. [Moy] [Page 93] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 Type 2 cost Only valid for type 2 external paths. For these paths, this field indicates the cost of the path's external portion. This cost has been advertised by an AS boundary router, and is the most significant part of the total path cost. For example, a type 2 external path with type 2 cost of 5 is always preferred over a path with type 2 cost of 10, regardless of the cost of the two paths' internal components. Link State Origin Valid only for intra-area paths, this field indicates the link state advertisement (router links or network links) that directly references the destination. For example, if the desti- nation is a transit network, this is the transit network's net- work links advertisement. If the destination is a stub network, this is the router links advertisement for the attached router. The advertisement is discovered during the shortest-path tree calculation (see Section 16.1). Multiple advertisements may reference the destination, however a tie-breaking scheme always reduces the choice to a single advertisement. The Link State Origin field is not used by the OSPF protocol, but it is used by the routing table calculation in OSPF's Multicast routing exten- sions (see [MOSPF]). When multiple paths of equal path-type and cost exist to a destina- tion (called elsewhere "equal-cost" paths), they are stored in a single routing table entry. Each one of the "equal-cost" paths is distinguished by the following fields: Next hop The outgoing router interface to use when forwarding traffic to the destination. On multi-access networks, the next hop also includes the IP address of the next router (if any) in the path towards the destination. This next router will always be one of the adjacent neighbors. Advertising router Valid only for inter-area and AS external paths. This field indicates the Router ID of the router advertising the summary link or AS external link that led to this path. 11.1. Routing table lookup When an IP data packet is received, an OSPF router finds the routing table entry that best matches the packet's destination. This routing table entry then provides the outgoing interface [Moy] [Page 94] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 and next hop router to use in forwarding the packet. This sec- tion describes the process of finding the best matching routing table entry. The process consists of a number of steps, wherein the collection of routing table entries is progressively pruned. In the end, the single routing table entry remaining is the called best match. Note that the steps described below may fail to produce a best match routing table entry (i.e., all existing routing table entries are pruned for some reason or another). In this case, the packet's IP destination is considered unreachable. Instead of being forwarded, the packet should be dropped and an ICMP destination unreachable message should be returned to the packet's source. (1) Select the complete set of "matching" routing table entries from the routing table. Each routing table entry describes a (set of) path(s) to a range of IP addresses. If the data packet's IP destination falls into an entry's range of IP addresses, the routing table entry is called a match. (It is quite likely that multiple entries will match the data packet. For example, a default route will match all pack- ets.) (2) Suppose that the packet's IP destination falls into one of the router's configured area address ranges (see Section 3.5), and that the particular area address range is active. This means that there are one or more reachable (by intra- area paths) networks contained in the area address range. The packet's IP destination is then required to belong to one of these constituent networks. For this reason, only matching routing table entries with path-type of intra-area are considered (all others are pruned). If no such matching entries exist, the destination is unreachable (see above). Otherwise, skip to step 4. (3) Reduce the set of matching entries to those having the most preferential path-type (see Section 11). OSPF has a four level hierarchy of paths. Intra-area paths are the most pre- ferred, followed in order by inter-area, Type 1 external and Type 2 external paths. (4) Select the remaining routing table entry that provides the longest (most specific) match. Another way of saying this is to choose the remaining entry that specifies the narrowest range of IP addresses.[10] For example, the entry for the address/mask pair of (128.185.1.0, 0xffffff00) is more [Moy] [Page 95] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 specific than an entry for the pair (128.185.0.0, 0xffff0000). The default route is the least specific match, since it matches all destinations. (5) At this point, there may still be multiple routing table entries remaining. Each routing entry will specify the same range of IP addresses, but a different IP Type of Service. Select the routing table entry whose TOS value matches the TOS found in the packet header. If there is no routing table entry for this TOS, select the routing table entry for TOS 0. In other words, packets requesting TOS X are routed along the TOS 0 path if a TOS X path does not exist. 11.2. Sample routing table, without areas Consider the Autonomous System pictured in Figure 2. No OSPF areas have been configured. A single metric is shown per out- bound interface, indicating that routes will not vary based on TOS. The calculation router RT6's routing table proceeds as described in Section 2.1. The resulting routing table is shown in Table 12. Destination types are abbreviated: Network as "N", area border router as "BR" and AS boundary router as "ASBR". There are no instances of multiple equal-cost shortest paths in this example. Also, since there are no areas, there are no inter-area paths. Routers RT5 and RT7 are AS boundary routers. Intra-area routes have been calculated to routers RT5 and RT7. This allows exter- nal routes to be calculated to the destinations advertised by RT5 and RT7 (i.e., networks N12, N13, N14 and N15). It is assumed all AS external advertisements originated by RT5 and RT7 are advertising type 1 external metrics. This results in type 1 external paths being calculated to destinations N12-N15. 11.3. Sample routing table, with areas Consider the previous example, this time split into OSPF areas. An OSPF area configuration is pictured in Figure 6. Router RT4's routing table will be described for this area configura- tion. Router RT4 has a connection to Area 1 and a backbone con- nection. This causes Router RT4 to view the AS as the concate- nation of the two graphs shown in Figures 7 and 8. The result- ing routing table is displayed in Table 13. [Moy] [Page 96] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 Type Dest Area Path Type Cost Next Adv. Hop(s) Router(s) ____________________________________________________________ N N1 0 intra-area 10 RT3 * N N2 0 intra-area 10 RT3 * N N3 0 intra-area 7 RT3 * N N4 0 intra-area 8 RT3 * N Ib 0 intra-area 7 * * N Ia 0 intra-area 12 RT10 * N N6 0 intra-area 8 RT10 * N N7 0 intra-area 12 RT10 * N N8 0 intra-area 10 RT10 * N N9 0 intra-area 11 RT10 * N N10 0 intra-area 13 RT10 * N N11 0 intra-area 14 RT10 * N H1 0 intra-area 21 RT10 * ASBR RT5 0 intra-area 6 RT5 * ASBR RT7 0 intra-area 8 RT10 * ____________________________________________________________ N N12 * type 1 ext. 10 RT10 RT7 N N13 * type 1 ext. 14 RT5 RT5 N N14 * type 1 ext. 14 RT5 RT5 N N15 * type 1 ext. 17 RT10 RT7 Table 12: The routing table for Router RT6 (no configured areas). Again, routers RT5 and RT7 are AS boundary routers. Routers RT3, RT4, RT7, RT10 and RT11 are area border routers. Note that there are two routing entries (in this case having identical paths) for router RT7, in its dual capacities as an area border router and an AS boundary router. Note also that there are two routing entries for the area border router RT3, since it has two areas in common with RT4 (Area 1 and the backbone). Backbone paths have been calculated to all area border routers (BR). These are used when determining the inter-area routes. Note that all of the inter-area routes are associated with the backbone; this is always the case when the router is itself an area border router. Routing information is condensed at area boundaries. In this example, we assume that Area 3 has been defined so that networks N9-N11 and the host route to H1 are all condensed to a single route when advertised to the backbone (by router RT11). Note that the cost of this route is the minimum of the set of costs to its individual components. [Moy] [Page 97] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 There is a virtual link configured between routers RT10 and RT11. Without this configured virtual link, RT11 would be unable to advertise a route for networks N9-N11 and host H1 into the backbone, and there would not be an entry for these networks in router RT4's routing table. In this example there are two equal-cost paths to network N12. However, they both use the same next hop (Router RT5). Router RT4's routing table would improve (i.e., some of the paths in the routing table would become shorter) if an Type Dest Area Path Type Cost Next Adv. Hops(s) Router(s) __________________________________________________________________ N N1 1 intra-area 4 RT1 * N N2 1 intra-area 4 RT2 * N N3 1 intra-area 1 * * N N4 1 intra-area 3 RT3 * BR RT3 1 intra-area 1 * * __________________________________________________________________ N Ib 0 intra-area 22 RT5 * N Ia 0 intra-area 27 RT5 * BR RT3 0 intra-area 21 RT5 * BR RT7 0 intra-area 14 RT5 * BR RT10 0 intra-area 22 RT5 * BR RT11 0 intra-area 25 RT5 * ASBR RT5 0 intra-area 8 * * ASBR RT7 0 intra-area 14 RT5 * __________________________________________________________________ N N6 0 inter-area 15 RT5 RT7 N N7 0 inter-area 19 RT5 RT7 N N8 0 inter-area 18 RT5 RT7 N N9-N11,H1 0 inter-area 26 RT5 RT11 __________________________________________________________________ N N12 * type 1 ext. 16 RT5 RT5,RT7 N N13 * type 1 ext. 16 RT5 RT5 N N14 * type 1 ext. 16 RT5 RT5 N N15 * type 1 ext. 23 RT5 RT7 Table 13: Router RT4's routing table in the presence of areas. [Moy] [Page 98] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 additional virtual link were configured between router RT4 and router RT3. The new virtual link would itself be associated with the first entry for area border router RT3 in Table 13 (an intra-area path through Area 1). This would yield a cost of 1 for the virtual link. The routing table entries changes that would be caused by the addition of this virtual link are shown in Table 14. 12. Link State Advertisements Each router in the Autonomous System originates one or more link state advertisements. There are five distinct types of link state advertisements, which are described in Section 4.3. The collection of link state advertisements forms the link state or topological database. Each separate type of advertisement has a separate func- tion. Router links and network links advertisements describe how an area's routers and networks are interconnected. Summary link adver- tisements provide a way of condensing an area's routing information. AS external advertisements provide a way of transparently advertis- ing externally-derived routing information throughout the Autonomous System. Each link state advertisement begins with a standard 20-byte header. This link state header is discussed below. Type Dest Area Path Type Cost Next Adv. Hop(s) Router(s) ________________________________________________________________ N Ib 0 intra-area 16 RT3 * N Ia 0 intra-area 21 RT3 * BR RT3 0 intra-area 1 * * BR RT10 0 intra-area 16 RT3 * BR RT11 0 intra-area 19 RT3 * ________________________________________________________________ N N9-N11,H1 0 inter-area 20 RT3 RT11 Table 14: Changes resulting from an additional virtual link. [Moy] [Page 99] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 12.1. The Link State Header The link state header contains the LS type, Link State ID and Advertising Router fields. The combination of these three fields uniquely identifies the link state advertisement. There may be several instances of an advertisement present in the Autonomous System, all at the same time. It must then be determined which instance is more recent. This determination is made be examining the LS sequence, LS checksum and LS age fields. These fields are also contained in the 20-byte link state header. Several of the OSPF packet types list link state advertisements. When the instance is not important, an advertisement is referred to by its LS type, Link State ID and Advertising Router (see Link State Request Packets). Otherwise, the LS sequence number, LS age and LS checksum fields must also be referenced. A detailed explanation of the fields contained in the link state header follows. 12.1.1. LS age This field is the age of the link state advertisement in seconds. It should be processed as an unsigned 16-bit integer. It is set to 0 when the link state advertisement is originated. It must be incremented by InfTransDelay on every hop of the flooding procedure. Link state advertise- ments are also aged as they are held in each router's data- base. The age of a link state advertisement is never incremented past MaxAge. Advertisements having age MaxAge are not used in the routing table calculation. When an advertisement's age first reaches MaxAge, it is reflooded. A link state advertisement of age MaxAge is finally flushed from the database when it is no longer contained on any neighbor Link state retransmission lists. This indicates that it has been acknowledged by all adjacent neighbors. For more informa- tion on the aging of link state advertisements, consult Sec- tion 14. Ages are examined when a router receives two instances of a link state advertisement, both having identical sequence numbers and checksums. An instance of age MaxAge is then always accepted as most recent; this allows old [Moy] [Page 100] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 advertisements to be flushed quickly from the routing domain. Otherwise, if the ages differ by more than Max- AgeDiff, the instance having the smaller age is accepted as most recent.[11] See Section 13.1 for more details. 12.1.2. Options The options field in the link state header indicates which optional capabilities are associated with the advertisement. OSPF's optional capabilities are described in Section 4.5. There are currently two optional capabilities defined; they are represented by the T-bit and E-bit found in the options field. The rest of the options field should be set to zero. The E-bit represents OSPF's external routing capability. This bit should be set in all advertisements associated with the backbone, and all advertisements associated with non- stub areas (see Section 3.6). It should also be set in all AS external advertisements. It should be reset in all router links, network links and summary link advertisements associated with a stub area. For all link state advertise- ments, the setting of the E-bit is for informational pur- poses only; it does not affect the routing table calcula- tion. The T-bit represents OSPF's TOS routing capability. This bit should be set in a router links advertisement if and only if the router is capable of calculating separate routes for each IP TOS (see Section 2.4). The T-bit should always be set in network links advertisements. It should be set in summary link and AS external link advertisements if and only if the advertisement describes paths for all TOS values, instead of just the TOS 0 path. Note that, with the T-bit set, there may still be only a single metric in the adver- tisement (the TOS 0 metric). This would mean that paths for non-zero TOS exist, but are equivalent to the TOS 0 path. A link state advertisement's T-bit is examined when calculat- ing the routing table's non-zero TOS paths (see Section 16.9). 12.1.3. LS type The LS type field dictates the format and function of the link state advertisement. Advertisements of different types have different names (e.g., router links or network links). All advertisement types, except the AS external link [Moy] [Page 101] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 advertisements (LS type = 5), are flooded throughout a sin- gle area only. AS external link advertisements are flooded throughout the entire Autonomous System, excluding stub areas (see Section 3.6). Each separate advertisement type is briefly described below in Table 15. LS Type Advertisement description __________________________________________________ 1 These are the router links advertisements. They describe the collected states of the router's interfaces. For more information, consult Section 12.4.1. __________________________________________________ 2 These are the network links advertisements. They describe the set of routers attached to the network. For more information, consult Section 12.4.2. __________________________________________________ 3 or 4 These are the summary link advertisements. They describe inter-area routes, and enable the condensation of routing information at area borders. Originated by area border routers, the Type 3 advertisements describe routes to networks while the Type 4 advertisements describe routes to AS boundary routers. __________________________________________________ 5 These are the AS external link advertisements. Originated by AS boundary routers, they describe routes to destinations external to the Autonomous System. A default route for the Autonomous System can also be described by an AS external link advertisement. Table 15: OSPF link state advertisements. [Moy] [Page 102] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 12.1.4. Link State ID This field identifies the piece of the routing domain that is being described by the advertisement. Depending on the advertisement's LS type, the Link State ID takes on the values listed in Table 16. Actually, for summary link (LS type = 3) advertisements and AS external link (LS type = 5) advertisements, the Link State ID may additionally have one or more of the destina- tion network's "host" bits set. For example, when originat- ing an AS external link for the network 10.0.0.0 with mask of 255.0.0.0, the Link State ID can be set to anything in the range 10.0.0.0 through 10.255.255.255 inclusive (although 10.0.0.0 should be used whenever possible). The freedom to set certain host bits allows a router to ori- ginate separate advertisements for two networks having the same address but different masks. See Appendix F for details. When the link state advertisement is describing a network (LS type = 2, 3 or 5), the network's IP address is easily derived by masking the Link State ID with the network/subnet mask contained in the body of the link state advertisement. When the link state advertisement is describing a router (LS type = 1 or 4), the Link State ID is always the described router's OSPF Router ID. When an AS external advertisement (LS Type = 5) is describ- ing a default route, its Link State ID is set to DefaultDes- tination (0.0.0.0). LS Type Link State ID _______________________________________________ 1 The originating router's Router ID. 2 The IP interface address of the network's Designated Router. 3 The destination network's IP address. 4 The Router ID of the described AS boundary router. 5 The destination network's IP address. Table 16: The advertisement's Link State ID. [Moy] [Page 103] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 12.1.5. Advertising Router This field specifies the OSPF Router ID of the advertisement's originator. For router links advertise- ments, this field is identical to the Link State ID field. Network link advertisements are originated by the network's Designated Router. Summary link advertisements are ori- ginated by area border routers. AS external link advertise- ments are originated by AS boundary routers. 12.1.6. LS sequence number The sequence number field is a signed 32-bit integer. It is used to detect old and duplicate link state advertisements. The space of sequence numbers is linearly ordered. The larger the sequence number (when compared as signed 32-bit integers) the more recent the advertisement. To describe to sequence number space more precisely, let N refer in the discussion below to the constant 2**31. The sequence number -N (0x80000000) is reserved (and unused). This leaves -N + 1 (0x80000001) as the smallest (and therefore oldest) sequence number. A router uses this sequence number the first time it originates any link state advertisement. Afterwards, the advertisement's sequence number is incremented each time the router originates a new instance of the advertisement. When an attempt is made to increment the sequence number past the maximum value of of N - 1 (0x7fffffff), the current instance of the advertisement must first be flushed from the routing domain. This is done by prematurely aging the advertisement (see Section 14.1) and reflooding it. As soon as this flood has been ack- nowledged by all adjacent neighbors, a new instance can be originated with sequence number of -N + 1 (0x80000001). The router may be forced to promote the sequence number of one of its advertisements when a more recent instance of the advertisement is unexpectedly received during the flooding process. This should be a rare event. This may indicate that an out-of-date advertisement, originated by the router itself before its last restart/reload, still exists in the Autonomous System. For more information see Section 13.4. [Moy] [Page 104] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 12.1.7. LS checksum This field is the checksum of the complete contents of the advertisement, excepting the age field. The age field is excepted so that an advertisement's age can be incremented without updating the checksum. The checksum used is the same that is used for ISO connectionless datagrams; it is commonly referred to as the Fletcher checksum. It is docu- mented in Annex B of [RFC 905]. The link state header also contains the length of the advertisement in bytes; subtract- ing the size of the age field (two bytes) yields the amount of data to checksum. The checksum is used to detect data corruption of an adver- tisement. This corruption can occur while an advertisement is being flooded, or while it is being held in a router's memory. The LS checksum field cannot take on the value of zero; the occurrence of such a value should be considered a checksum failure. In other words, calculation of the check- sum is not optional. The checksum of a link state advertisement is verified in two cases: a) when it is received in a Link State Update Packet and b) at times during the aging of the link state database. The detection of a checksum failure leads to separate actions in each case. See Sections 13 and 14 for more details. Whenever the LS sequence number field indicates that two instances of an advertisement are the same, the LS checksum field is examined. If there is a difference, the instance with the larger checksum is considered to be most recent.[12] See Section 13.1 for more details. 12.2. The link state database A router has a separate link state database for every area to which it belongs. The link state database has been referred to elsewhere in the text as the topological database. All routers belonging to the same area have identical topological databases for the area. The databases for each individual area are always dealt with separately. The shortest path calculation is performed separately for each area (see Section 16). Components of the area topological database are flooded throughout the area only. Finally, when an adjacency (belonging to Area A) is being [Moy] [Page 105] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 brought up, only the database for Area A is synchronized between the two routers. The area database is composed of router links advertisements, network links advertisements, and summary link advertisements (all listed in the area data structure). In addition, external routes (AS external advertisements) are included in all non-stub area databases (see Section 3.6). An implementation of OSPF must be able to access individual pieces of an area database. This lookup function is based on an advertisement's LS type, Link State ID and Advertising Router.[13] There will be a single instance (the most up-to- date) of each link state advertisement in the database. The database lookup function is invoked during the link state flood- ing procedure (Section 13) and the routing table calculation (Section 16). In addition, using this lookup function the router can determine whether it has itself ever originated a particular link state advertisement, and if so, with what LS sequence number. A link state advertisement is added to a router's database when either a) it is received during the flooding process (Section 13) or b) it is originated by the router itself (Section 12.4). A link state advertisement is deleted from a router's database when either a) it has been overwritten by a newer instance dur- ing the flooding process (Section 13) or b) the router ori- ginates a newer instance of one of its self-originated adver- tisements (Section 12.4) or c) the advertisement ages out and is flushed from the routing domain (Section 14). Whenever a link state advertisement is deleted from the database it must also be removed from all neighbors' Link state retransmission lists (see Section 10). 12.3. Representation of TOS All OSPF link state advertisements (with the exception of net- work links advertisements) specify metrics. In router links advertisements, the metrics indicate the costs of the described interfaces. In summary link and AS external link advertise- ments, the metric indicates the cost of the described path. In all of these advertisements, a separate metric can be specified for each IP TOS. The encoding of TOS in OSPF link state adver- tisements is specified in Table 17. That table relates the OSPF encoding to the IP packet header's TOS field (defined in [RFC 1349]). The OSPF encoding is expressed as a decimal integer, and the IP packet header's TOS field is expressed in the binary [Moy] [Page 106] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 TOS values used in [RFC 1349]. OSPF encoding RFC 1349 TOS values ___________________________________________ 0 0000 normal service 2 0001 minimize monetary cost 4 0010 maximize reliability 6 0011 8 0100 maximize throughput 10 0101 12 0110 14 0111 16 1000 minimize delay 18 1001 20 1010 22 1011 24 1100 26 1101 28 1110 30 1111 Table 17: Representing TOS in OSPF. Each OSPF link state advertisement must specify the TOS 0 metric. Other TOS metrics, if they appear, must appear in order of increasing TOS encoding. For example, the TOS 8 (maximize throughput) metric must always appear before the TOS 16 (minim- ize delay) metric when both are specified. If a metric for some non-zero TOS is not specified, its cost defaults to the cost for TOS 0, unless the T-bit is reset in the advertisement's options field (see Section 12.1.2 for more details). 12.4. Originating link state advertisements A router may originate many types of link state advertisements. A router originates a router links advertisement for each area to which it belongs. If the router is also the Designated Router for any of its attached networks, it will originate a network links advertisement for that network. Area border routers originate a single summary links advertise- ment for each known inter-area destination. AS boundary routers originate a single AS external links advertisement for each [Moy] [Page 107] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 known AS external destination. Destinations are advertised one at a time so that the change in any single route can be flooded without reflooding the entire collection of routes. During the flooding procedure, many link state advertisements can be car- ried by a single Link State Update packet. As an example, consider router RT4 in Figure 6. It is an area border router, having a connection to Area 1 and the backbone. Router RT4 originates 5 distinct link state advertisements into the backbone (one router links, and one summary link for each of the networks N1-N4). Router RT4 will also originate 8 distinct link state advertisements into Area 1 (one router links and seven summary link advertisements as pictured in Figure 7). If RT4 has been selected as Designated Router for network N3, it will also originate a network links advertisement for N3 into Area 1. In this same figure, router RT5 will be originating 3 distinct AS external link advertisements (one for each of the networks N12-N14). These will be flooded throughout the entire AS, assuming that none of the areas have been configured as stubs. However, if area 3 has been configured as a stub area, the external advertisements for networks N12-N14 will not be flooded into area 3 (see Section 3.6). Instead, router RT11 would ori- ginate a default summary link advertisement that would be flooded throughout area 3 (see Section 12.4.3). This instructs all of area 3's internal routers to send their AS external traffic to RT11. Whenever a new instance of a link state advertisement is ori- ginated, its LS sequence number is incremented, its LS age is set to 0, its LS checksum is calculated, and the advertisement is added to the link state database and flooded out the appropriate interfaces. See Section 13.2 for details concerning the installation of the advertisement into the link state data- base. See Section 13.3 for details concerning the flooding of newly originated advertisements. The eight events that cause a new instance of a link state advertisement to be originated are: (1) The LS refresh timer firing. There is a LS refresh timer for each link state advertisement that the router has ori- ginated. The LS refresh timer is an interval timer, with length LSRefreshTimer. The LS refresh timer guarantees periodic originations regardless of any other events that [Moy] [Page 108] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 cause new instances. This periodic updating of link state advertisements adds robustness to the link state algorithm. Link state advertisements that solely describe unreachable destinations should not be refreshed, but should instead be flushed from the routing domain (see Section 14.1). When whatever is being described by a link state advertisement changes, a new advertisement is originated. Two instances of the same link state advertisement may not be originated within the time period MinLSInterval. This may require that the gen- eration of the next instance to be delayed by up to MinLSInter- val. The following changes may cause a router to originate a new instance of an advertisement. These changes should cause new originations only if the contents of the new advertisement would be different. (2) An interface's state changes (see Section 9.1). This may mean that it is necessary to produce a new instance of the router links advertisement. (3) An attached network's Designated Router changes. A new router links advertisement should be originated. Also, if the router itself is now the Designated Router, a new net- work links advertisement should be produced. (4) One of the neighboring routers changes to/from the FULL state. This may mean that it is necessary to produce a new instance of the router links advertisement. Also, if the router is itself the Designated Router for the attached net- work, a new network links advertisement should be produced. The next three events concern area border routers only. (5) An intra-area route has been added/deleted/modified in the routing table. This may cause a new instance of a summary links advertisement (for this route) to be originated in each attached area (this includes the backbone). (6) An inter-area route has been added/deleted/modified in the routing table. This may cause a new instance of a summary links advertisement (for this route) to be originated in each attached area (but NEVER for the backbone). [Moy] [Page 109] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 (7) The router becomes newly attached to an area. The router must then originate summary link advertisements into the newly attached area for all pertinent intra-area and inter- area routes in its routing table. See Section 12.4.3 for more details. The last event concerns AS boundary routers only. (8) An external route gained through direct experience with an external routing protocol (like EGP) changes. This will cause the AS boundary router to originate a new instance of an external links advertisement. The construction of each type of the link state advertisement is explained below. In general, these sections describe the con- tents of the advertisement body (i.e., the part coming after the 20-byte advertisement header). For information concerning the building of the link state advertisement header, see Section 12.1. 12.4.1. Router links A router originates a router links advertisement for each area that it belongs to. Such an advertisement describes the collected states of the router's links to the area. The advertisement is flooded throughout the particular area, and no further. The format of a router links advertisement is shown in Appendix A (Section A.4.2). The first 20 bytes of the advertisement consist of the generic link state header that was discussed in Section 12.1. Router links advertisements have LS type = 1. The router indicates whether it is wil- ling to calculate separate routes for each IP TOS by setting (or resetting) the T-bit of the link state advertisement's Options field. A router also indicates whether it is an area border router, or an AS boundary router, by setting the appropriate bits (bit B and bit E, respectively) in its router links adver- tisements. This enables paths to those types of routers to be saved in the routing table, for later processing of sum- mary link advertisements and AS external link advertise- ments. Note that bit E should never be set in a router links advertisement for a stub area (stub areas cannot contain AS [Moy] [Page 110] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 .................................... . 192.1.2 Area 1 . . + . . | . . | 3+---+1 . . N1 |--|RT1|-----+ . . | +---+ . . | _______N3 . . + / . 1+---+ . * 192.1.1 *------|RT4| . + /_______/ . +---+ . | / | . . | 3+---+1 / | . . N2 |--|RT2|-----+ 1| . . | +---+ +---+8 . 6+---+ . | |RT3|----------------|RT6| . + +---+ . +---+ . 192.1.3 |2 . 18.10.0.6|7 . | . | . +------------+ . . 192.1.4 (N4) . .................................... Figure 15: Area 1 with IP addresses shown boundary routers). In addition, the router sets bit V in its router links advertisement for Area A if and only if it is the endpoint of an active virtual link using Area A as its transit area. This enables the other routers attached to Area A to discover whether the area supports any virtual links (i.e., is a transit area). The router links advertisement then describes the router's working connections (links) to the area. Each link is typed according to the kind of attached network. Each link is also labelled with its Link ID. This ID gives a name to the entity that is on the other end of the link. Table 18 sum- marizes the values used for the type and Link ID fields. [Moy] [Page 111] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 Link type Description Link ID __________________________________________________ 1 Point-to-point Neighbor Router ID link 2 Link to transit Interface address of network Designated Router 3 Link to stub IP network number network 4 Virtual link Neighbor Router ID Table 18: Link descriptions in the router links advertisement. In addition, the Link Data field is specified for each link. This field gives 32 bits of extra information for the link. For links to routers and transit networks, this field speci- fies the IP interface address of the associated router interface (this is needed by the routing table calculation, see Section 16.1.1). For links to stub networks, this field specifies the network's IP address mask. For unnumbered point-to-point networks, the Link Data field should be set to the unnumbered interface's MIB-II [RFC 1213] ifIndex value. Finally, the cost of using the link for output (possibly specifying a different cost for each type of service) is specified. The output cost of a link is configurable. It must always be non-zero. To further describe the process of building the list of link descriptions, suppose a router wishes to build a router links advertisement for Area A. The router examines its collection of interface data structures. For each inter- face, the following steps are taken: o If the attached network does not belong to Area A, no links are added to the advertisement, and the next interface should be examined. o Else, if the state of the interface is Down, no links are added. o Else, if the state of the interface is Point-to-Point, then add links according to the following: [Moy] [Page 112] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 - If the neighboring router is fully adjacent, add a Type 1 link (point-to-point) if this is an interface to a point-to-point network, or add a type 4 link (virtual link) if this is a virtual link. The Link ID should be set to the Router ID of the neighboring router. For virtual links and numbered point-to- point networks, the Link Data should specify the interface IP address. For unnumbered point-to-point networks, the Link Data field should specify the interface's MIB-II [RFC 1213] ifIndex value. - If this is a numbered point-to-point network (i.e, not a virtual link and not an unnumbered point-to- point network) and the neighboring router's IP address is known, add a Type 3 link (stub network) whose Link ID is the neighbor's IP address, whose Link Data is the mask 0xffffffff indicating a host route, and whose cost is the interface's configured output cost. o Else if the state of the interface is Loopback, add a Type 3 link (stub network) as long as this is not an interface to an unnumbered serial line. The Link ID should be set to the IP interface address, the Link Data set to the mask 0xffffffff (indicating a host route), and the cost set to 0. o Else if the state of the interface is Waiting, add a Type 3 link (stub network) whose Link ID is the IP net- work number of the attached network and whose Link Data is the attached network's address mask. o Else, there has been a Designated Router selected for the attached network. If the router is fully adjacent to the Designated Router, or if the router itself is Designated Router and is fully adjacent to at least one other router, add a single Type 2 link (transit network) whose whose link ID is the IP interface address of the attached network's Designated Router (which may be the router itself) and whose Link Data is the interface IP address. Otherwise, add a link as if the interface state were Waiting (see above). Unless otherwise specified, the cost of each link generated by the above procedure is equal to the output cost of the associated interface. Note that in the case of serial lines, multiple links may be generated by a single [Moy] [Page 113] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 interface. After consideration of all the router interfaces, host links are added to the advertisement by examining the list of attached hosts. A host route is represented as a Type 3 link (stub network) whose link ID is the host's IP address and whose Link Data is the mask of all ones (0xffffffff). As an example, consider the router links advertisements gen- erated by router RT3, as pictured in Figure 6. The area containing router RT3 (Area 1) has been redrawn, with actual network addresses, in Figure 15. Assume that the last byte of all of RT3's interface addresses is 3, giving it the interface addresses 192.1.1.3 and 192.1.4.3, and that the other routers have similar addressing schemes. In addition, assume that all links are functional, and that Router IDs are assigned as the smallest IP interface address. RT3 originates two router links advertisements, one for Area 1 and one for the backbone. Assume that router RT4 has been selected as the Designated router for network 192.1.1.0. RT3's router links advertisement for Area 1 is then shown below. It indicates that RT3 has two connections to Area 1, the first a link to the transit network 192.1.1.0 and the second a link to the stub network 192.1.4.0. Note that the transit network is identified by the IP interface of its Designated Router (i.e., the Link ID = 192.1.1.4 which is the Designated Router RT4's IP interface to 192.1.1.0). Note also that RT3 has indicated that it is capable of cal- culating separate routes based on IP TOS, through setting the T-bit in the Options field. It has also indicated that it is an area border router. ; RT3's router links advertisement for Area 1 LS age = 0 ;always true on origination Options = (T-bit|E-bit) ;TOS-capable LS type = 1 ;indicates router links Link State ID = 192.1.1.3 ;RT3's Router ID Advertising Router = 192.1.1.3 ;RT3's Router ID bit E = 0 ;not an AS boundary router bit B = 1 ;RT3 is an area border router #links = 2 Link ID = 192.1.1.4 ;IP address of Designated Router Link Data = 192.1.1.3 ;RT3's IP interface to net Type = 2 ;connects to transit network # other metrics = 0 TOS 0 metric = 1 [Moy] [Page 114] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 Link ID = 192.1.4.0 ;IP Network number Link Data = 0xffffff00 ;Network mask Type = 3 ;connects to stub network # other metrics = 0 TOS 0 metric = 2 Next RT3's router links advertisement for the backbone is shown. It indicates that RT3 has a single attachment to the backbone. This attachment is via an unnumbered point-to- point link to router RT6. RT3 has again indicated that it is TOS-capable, and that it is an area border router. ; RT3's router links advertisement for the backbone LS age = 0 ;always true on origination Options = (T-bit|E-bit) ;TOS-capable LS type = 1 ;indicates router links Link State ID = 192.1.1.3 ;RT3's router ID Advertising Router = 192.1.1.3 ;RT3's router ID bit E = 0 ;not an AS boundary router bit B = 1 ;RT3 is an area border router #links = 1 Link ID = 18.10.0.6 ;Neighbor's Router ID Link Data = 0.0.0.0 ;Interface to unnumbered SL Type = 1 ;connects to router # other metrics = 0 TOS 0 metric = 8 Even though router RT3 has indicated that it is TOS-capable in the above examples, only a single metric (the TOS 0 metric) has been specified for each interface. Different metrics can be specified for each TOS. The encoding of TOS in OSPF link state advertisements is described in Section 12.3. As an example, suppose the point-to-point link between routers RT3 and RT6 in Figure 15 is a satellite link. The AS administrator may want to encourage the use of the line for high bandwidth traffic. This would be done by setting the metric artificially low for the appropriate TOS value. Router RT3 would then originate the following router links advertisement for the backbone (TOS 8 = maximize throughput): ; RT3's router links advertisement for the backbone LS age = 0 ;always true on origination Options = (T-bit|E-bit) ;TOS-capable [Moy] [Page 115] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 LS type = 1 ;indicates router links Link State ID = 192.1.1.3 ;RT3's Router ID Advertising Router = 192.1.1.3 bit E = 0 ;not an AS boundary router bit B = 1 ;RT3 is an area border router #links = 1 Link ID = 18.10.0.6 ; Neighbor's Router ID Link Data = 0.0.0.0 ;Interface to unnumbered SL Type = 1 ;connects to router # other metrics = 1 TOS 0 metric = 8 TOS = 8 ;maximize throughput metric = 1 ;traffic preferred 12.4.2. Network links A network links advertisement is generated for every transit multi-access network. (A transit network is a network hav- ing two or more attached routers). The network links adver- tisement describes all the routers that are attached to the network. The Designated Router for the network originates the adver- tisement. The Designated Router originates the advertise- ment only if it is fully adjacent to at least one other router on the network. The network links advertisement is flooded throughout the area that contains the transit net- work, and no further. The networks links advertisement lists those routers that are fully adjacent to the Desig- nated Router; each fully adjacent router is identified by its OSPF Router ID. The Designated Router includes itself in this list. The Link State ID for a network links advertisement is the IP interface address of the Designated Router. This value, masked by the network's address mask (which is also con- tained in the network links advertisement) yields the network's IP address. A router that has formerly been the Designated Router for a network, but is no longer, should flush the network links advertisement that it had previously originated. This advertisement is no longer used in the routing table calcu- lation. It is flushed by prematurely incrementing the advertisement's age to MaxAge and reflooding (see Section 14.1). [Moy] [Page 116] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 As an example of a network links advertisement, again con- sider the area configuration in Figure 6. Network links advertisements are originated for network N3 in Area 1, net- works N6 and N8 in Area 2, and network N9 in Area 3. Assum- ing that router RT4 has been selected as the Designated Router for network N3, the following network links adver- tisement is generated by RT4 on behalf of network N3 (see Figure 15 for the address assignments): ; network links advertisement for network N3 LS age = 0 ;always true on origination Options = (T-bit|E-bit) ;TOS-capable LS type = 2 ;indicates network links Link State ID = 192.1.1.4 ;IP address of Designated Router Advertising Router = 192.1.1.4 ;RT4's Router ID Network Mask = 0xffffff00 Attached Router = 192.1.1.4 ;Router ID Attached Router = 192.1.1.1 ;Router ID Attached Router = 192.1.1.2 ;Router ID Attached Router = 192.1.1.3 ;Router ID 12.4.3. Summary links Each summary link advertisement describes a route to a sin- gle destination. Summary link advertisements are flooded throughout a single area only. The destination described is one that is external to the area, yet still belonging to the Autonomous System. Summary link advertisements are originated by area border routers. The precise summary routes to advertise into an area are determined by examining the routing table structure (see Section 11) in accordance with the algorithm described below. Note that only intra-area routes are advertised into the backbone, while both intra-area and inter-area routes are advertised into the other areas. To determine which routes to advertise into an attached Area A, each routing table entry is processed as follows. Remember that each routing table entry describes a set of equal-cost best paths to a particular destination: o Only Destination types of network and AS boundary router are advertised in summary link advertisements. If the routing table entry's Destination type is area border [Moy] [Page 117] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 router, examine the next routing table entry. o AS external routes are never advertised in summary link advertisements. If the routing table entry has Path- type of type 1 external or type 2 external, examine the next routing table entry. o Else, if the area associated with this set of paths is the Area A itself, do not generate a summary link adver- tisement for the route.[14] o Else, if the next hops associated with this set of paths belong to Area A itself, do not generate a summary link advertisement for the route.[15] This is the logical equivalent of a Distance Vector protocol's split horizon logic. o Else, if the routing table cost equals or exceeds the value LSInfinity, a summary link advertisement cannot be generated for this route. o Else, if the destination of this route is an AS boundary router, generate a Type 4 link state advertisement for the destination, with Link State ID equal to the AS boundary router's ID and metric equal to the routing table entry's cost. These advertisements should not be generated if area A has been configured as a stub area. o Else, the Destination type is network. If this is an inter-area route, generate a Type 3 advertisement for the destination, with Link State ID equal to the network's address (if necessary, the Link State ID can also have one or more of the network's host bits set; see Appendix F for details) and metric equal to the routing table cost. o The one remaining case is an intra-area route to a net- work. This means that the network is contained in one of the router's directly attached areas. In general, this information must be condensed before appearing in summary link advertisements. Remember that an area has been defined as a list of address ranges, each range consisting of an [address,mask] pair and a status indi- cation of either Advertise or DoNotAdvertise. At most a single Type 3 advertisement is made for each range. When the range's status indicates Advertise, a Type 3 adver- tisement is generated with Link State ID equal to the range's address (if necessary, the Link State ID can [Moy] [Page 118] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 also have one or more of the range's "host" bits set; see Appendix F for details) and cost equal to the smal- lest cost of any of the component networks. When the range's status indicates DoNotAdvertise, the Type 3 advertisement is suppressed and the component networks remain hidden from other areas. By default, if a network is not contained in any expli- citly configured address range, a Type 3 advertisement is generated with Link State ID equal to the network's address (if necessary, the Link State ID can also have one or more of the network's "host" bits set; see Appen- dix F for details) and metric equal to the network's routing table cost. If virtual links are being used to provide/increase con- nectivity of the backbone, routing information concern- ing the backbone networks should not be condensed before being summarized into the virtual links' transit areas. Nor should the advertisement of backbone networks into transit areas be suppressed. In other words, the backbone's configured ranges should be ignored when ori- ginating summary links into transit areas. The existence of virtual links is determined during the shortest path calculation for the transit areas (see Section 16.1). If a router advertises a summary advertisement for a desti- nation which then becomes unreachable, the router must then flush the advertisement from the routing domain by setting its age to MaxAge and reflooding (see Section 14.1). Also, if the destination is still reachable, yet can no longer be advertised according to the above procedure (e.g., it is now an inter-area route, when it used to be an intra-area route associated with some non-backbone area; it would thus no longer be advertisable to the backbone), the advertisement should also be flushed from the routing domain. For an example of summary link advertisements, consider again the area configuration in Figure 6. Routers RT3, RT4, RT7, RT10 and RT11 are all area border routers, and there- fore are originating summary links advertisements. Consider in particular router RT4. Its routing table was calculated as the example in Section 11.3. RT4 originates summary link advertisements into both the backbone and Area 1. Into the backbone, router RT4 originates separate advertisements for each of the networks N1-N4. Into Area 1, router RT4 ori- ginates separate advertisements for networks N6-N8 and the [Moy] [Page 119] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 AS boundary routers RT5,RT7. It also condenses host routes Ia and Ib into a single summary advertisement. Finally, the routes to networks N9,N10,N11 and host H9 are advertised by a single summary link. This condensation was originally performed by the router RT11. These advertisements are illustrated graphically in Figures 7 and 8. Two of the summary link advertisements originated by router RT4 follow. The actual IP addresses for the net- works and routers in question have been assigned in Figure 15. ; summary link advertisement for network N1, ; originated by router RT4 into the backbone LS age = 0 ;always true on origination Options = (T-bit|E-bit) ;TOS-capable LS type = 3 ;indicates summary link to IP net Link State ID = 192.1.2.0 ;N1's IP network number Advertising Router = 192.1.1.4 ;RT4's ID TOS = 0 metric = 4 ; summary link advertisement for AS boundary router RT7 ; originated by router RT4 into Area 1 LS age = 0 ;always true on origination Options = (T-bit|E-bit) ;TOS-capable LS type = 4 ;indicates summary link to ASBR Link State ID = router RT7's ID Advertising Router = 192.1.1.4 ;RT4's ID TOS = 0 metric = 14 Summary link advertisements pertain to a single destination (IP network or AS boundary router). However, for a single destination there may be separate sets of paths, and there- fore separate routing table entries, for each Type of Ser- vice. All these entries must be considered when building the summary link advertisement for the destination; a single advertisement must specify the separate costs (if they exist) for each TOS. The encoding of TOS in OSPF link state advertisements is described in Section 12.3. Clearing the T-bit in the Options field of a summary link advertisement indicates that there is a TOS 0 path to the destination, but no paths for non-zero TOS. This can happen when non-TOS capable routers exist in the routing domain [Moy] [Page 120] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 (see Section 2.4). 12.4.4. Originating summary links into stub areas The algorithm in Section 12.4.3 is optional when Area A is an OSPF stub area. Area border routers connecting to a stub area can originate summary link advertisements into the area according to the above Section's algorithm, or can choose to originate only a subset of the advertisements, possibly under configuration control. The fewer advertisements ori- ginated, the smaller the stub area's link state database, further reducing the demands on its router's resources. How- ever, omitting advertisements may also lead to sub-optimal inter-area routing, although routing will continue to func- tion. As specified in Section 12.4.3, Type 4 link state advertise- ments (ASBR summary links) are never originated into stub areas. In stub areas only, the DefaultDestination can be specified in summary link advertisements (see Section 3.6). In a stub area, instead of importing external routes each area border router originates a "default summary link" (Link State ID = DefaultDestination) into the area. The Link State ID for the default summary link is set to DefaultDestination, and the metric set to the (per-area) configurable parameter StubDe- faultCost. Note that StubDefaultCost need not be configured identically in all of the stub area's area border routers. 12.4.5. AS external links AS external link advertisements describe routes to destina- tions external to the Autonomous System. Most AS external link advertisements describe routes to specific external destinations; in these cases the advertisement's Link State ID is set to the destination network's IP address (if neces- sary, the Link State ID can also have one or more of the network's "host" bits set; see Appendix F for details). However, a default route for the Autonomous System can be described in an AS external advertisement by setting the advertisement's Link State ID to DefaultDestination (0.0.0.0). AS external link advertisements are originated by AS boundary routers. An AS boundary router originates a single AS external link advertisement for each external route that it has learned, either through another routing protocol (such as EGP), or through configuration informa- tion. [Moy] [Page 121] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 In general, AS external link advertisements are the only type of link state advertisements that are flooded throughout the entire Autonomous System; all other types of link state advertisements are specific to a single area. However, AS external advertisements are not flooded into/throughout stub areas (see Section 3.6). This enables a reduction in link state database size for routers internal to stub areas. The metric that is advertised for an external route can be one of two types. Type 1 metrics are comparable to the link state metric. Type 2 metrics are assumed to be larger than the cost of any intra-AS path. As with summary link adver- tisements, if separate paths exist based on TOS, separate TOS costs can be included in the AS external link advertise- ment. The encoding of TOS in OSPF link state advertisements is described in Section 12.3. If the T-bit of the advertisement's Options field is clear, no non-zero TOS paths to the destination exist. If a router advertises an AS external link advertisement for a destination which then becomes unreachable, the router must then flush the advertisement from the routing domain by setting its age to MaxAge and reflooding (see Section 14.1). For an example of AS external link advertisements, consider once again the AS pictured in Figure 6. There are two AS boundary routers: RT5 and RT7. Router RT5 originates three external link advertisements, for networks N12-N14. Router RT7 originates two external link advertisements, for net- works N12 and N15. Assume that RT7 has learned its route to N12 via EGP, and that it wishes to advertise a Type 2 metric to the AS. RT7 would then originate the following adver- tisement for N12: ; AS external link advertisement for network N12, ; originated by router RT7 LS age = 0 ;always true on origination Options = (T-bit|E-bit) ;TOS-capable LS type = 5 ;indicates AS external link Link State ID = N12's IP network number Advertising Router = Router RT7's ID bit E = 1 ;Type 2 metric TOS = 0 metric = 2 Forwarding address = 0.0.0.0 [Moy] [Page 122] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 In the above example, the forwarding address field has been set to 0.0.0.0, indicating that packets for the external destination should be forwarded to the advertising OSPF router (RT7). This is not always desirable. Consider the example pictured in Figure 16. There are three OSPF routers (RTA, RTB and RTC) connected to a common network. Only one of these routers, RTA, is exchanging EGP information with the non-OSPF router RTX. RTA must then originate AS exter- nal link state advertisements for those destinations it has learned from RTX. By using the AS external advertisement's forwarding address field, RTA can specify that packets for these destinations be forwarded directly to RTX. Without this feature, routers RTB and RTC would take an extra hop to get to these destinations. Note that when the forwarding address field is non-zero, it should point to a router belonging to another Autonomous System. A forwarding address can also be specified for the default route. For example, in figure 16 RTA may want to specify that all externally-destined packets should by default be forwarded to its EGP peer RTX. The resulting AS external link advertisement is pictured below. Note that the Link State ID is set to DefaultDestination. ; Default route, originated by router RTA ; Packets forwarded through RTX LS age = 0 ;always true on origination Options = (T-bit|E-bit) ;TOS-capable LS type = 5 ;indicates AS external link Link State ID = DefaultDestination ; default route Advertising Router = Router RTA's ID bit E = 1 ;Type 2 metric TOS = 0 metric = 1 Forwarding address = RTX's IP address In figure 16, suppose instead that both RTA and RTB exchange EGP information with RTX. In this case, RTA and RTB would originate the same set of external advertisements. These advertisements, if they specify the same metric, would be functionally equivalent since they would specify the same destination and forwarding address (RTX). This leads to a clear duplication of effort. If only one of RTA or RTB ori- ginated the set of external advertisements, the routing would remain the same, and the size of the link state [Moy] [Page 123] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 database would decrease. However, it must be unambiguously defined as to which router originates the advertisements (otherwise neither may, or the identity of the originator may oscillate). The following rule is thereby established: if two routers, both reachable from one another, originate functionally equivalent AS external advertisements (i.e., same destination, cost and non-zero forwarding address), then the advertisement originated by the router having the highest OSPF Router ID is used. The router having the lower OSPF Router ID can then flush its advertisement. Flushing a link state advertisement is discussed in Section 14.1. 13. The Flooding Procedure Link State Update packets provide the mechanism for flooding link state advertisements. A Link State Update packet may contain several distinct advertisements, and floods each advertisement one hop further from its point of origination. To make the flooding procedure reliable, each advertisement must be acknowledged separately. Acknowledgments are transmitted in Link State Ack- nowledgment packets. Many separate acknowledgments can be grouped together into a single packet. The flooding procedure starts when a Link State Update packet has been received. Many consistency checks have been made on the received packet before being handed to the flooding procedure (see Section 8.2). In particular, the Link State Update packet has been + | +---+.....|.EGP |RTA|-----|.....+---+ +---+ |-----|RTX| | +---+ +---+ | |RTB|-----| +---+ | | +---+ | |RTC|-----| +---+ | | + Figure 16: Forwarding address example [Moy] [Page 124] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 associated with a particular neighbor, and a particular area. If the neighbor is in a lesser state than Exchange, the packet should be dropped without further processing. All types of link state advertisements, other than AS external links, are associated with a specific area. However, link state advertisements do not contain an area field. A link state advertisement's area must be deduced from the Link State Update packet header. For each link state advertisement contained in the packet, the fol- lowing steps are taken: (1) Validate the advertisement's link state checksum. If the check- sum turns out to be invalid, discard the advertisement and get the next one from the Link State Update packet. (2) Examine the link state advertisement's LS type. If the LS type is unknown, discard the advertisement and get the next one from the Link State Update Packet. This specification defines LS Types 1-5 (see Section 4.3). (3) Else if this is a AS external advertisement (LS type = 5), and the area has been configured as a stub area, discard the adver- tisement and get the next one from the Link State Update Packet. AS external advertisements are not flooded into/throughout stub areas (see Section 3.6). (4) Else if the advertisement's age is equal to MaxAge, and there is currently no instance of the advertisement in the router's link state database, then take the following actions: (a) Acknowledge the receipt of the advertisement by sending a Link State Acknowledgment packet back to the sending neigh- bor (see Section 13.5). (b) Purge all outstanding requests for equal or previous instances of the advertisement from the sending neighbor's Link State Request list (see Section 10). (c) If the sending neighbor is in state Exchange or in state Loading, then install the MaxAge advertisement in the link state database. Otherwise, simply discard the advertise- ment. In either case, examine the next advertisement (if any) listed in the Link State Update packet. [Moy] [Page 125] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 (5) Otherwise, find the instance of this advertisement that is currently contained in the router's link state database. If there is no database copy, or the received advertisement is more recent than the database copy (see Section 13.1 below for the determination of which advertisement is more recent) the follow- ing steps must be performed: (a) If there is already a database copy, and if the database copy was installed less than MinLSInterval seconds ago, dis- card the new advertisement (without acknowledging it) and examine the next advertisement (if any) listed in the Link State Update packet. (b) Otherwise immediately flood the new advertisement out some subset of the router's interfaces (see Section 13.3). In some cases (e.g., the state of the receiving interface is DR and the advertisement was received from a router other than the Backup DR) the advertisement will be flooded back out the receiving interface. This occurrence should be noted for later use by the acknowledgment process (Section 13.5). (c) Remove the current database copy from all neighbors' Link state retransmission lists. (d) Install the new advertisement in the link state database (replacing the current database copy). This may cause the routing table calculation to be scheduled. In addition, timestamp the new advertisement with the current time (i.e., the time it was received). The flooding procedure cannot overwrite the newly installed advertisement until MinLSIn- terval seconds have elapsed. The advertisement installation process is discussed further in Section 13.2. (e) Possibly acknowledge the receipt of the advertisement by sending a Link State Acknowledgment packet back out the receiving interface. This is explained below in Section 13.5. (f) If this new link state advertisement indicates that it was originated by this router itself, the router must advance the advertisement's link state sequence number, and issue a new instance of the advertisement (see Section 13.4). (6) Else, if there is an instance of the advertisement on the send- ing neighbor's Link state request list, an error has occurred in the Database Description process. In this case, restart the Database Description process by generating the neighbor event BadLSReq for the sending neighbor and stop processing the Link [Moy] [Page 126] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 State Update packet. (7) Else, if the received advertisement is the same instance as the database copy (i.e., neither one is more recent) the following two steps should be performed: (a) If the advertisement is listed in the Link state retransmis- sion list for the receiving adjacency, the router itself is expecting an acknowledgment for this advertisement. The router should treat the received advertisement as an ack- nowledgment, by removing the advertisement from the Link state retransmission list. This is termed an "implied ack- nowledgment". Its occurrence should be noted for later use by the acknowledgment process (Section 13.5). (b) Possibly acknowledge the receipt of the advertisement by sending a Link State Acknowledgment packet back out the receiving interface. This is explained below in Section 13.5. (8) Else, the database copy is more recent. Note an unusual event to network management, discard the advertisement and process the next link state advertisement contained in the packet. 13.1. Determining which link state is newer When a router encounters two instances of a link state adver- tisement, it must determine which is more recent. This occurred above when comparing a received advertisement to the database copy. This comparison must also be done during the database exchange procedure which occurs during adjacency bring-up. A link state advertisement is identified by its LS type, Link State ID and Advertising Router. For two instances of the same advertisement, the LS sequence number, LS age, and LS checksum fields are used to determine which instance is more recent: o The advertisement having the newer LS sequence number is more recent. See Section 12.1.6 for an explanation of the LS sequence number space. If both instances have the same LS sequence number, then: o If the two instances have different LS checksums, then the instance having the larger LS checksum (when considered as a 16-bit unsigned integer) is considered more recent. [Moy] [Page 127] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 o Else, if only one of the instances is of age MaxAge, the instance of age MaxAge is considered to be more recent. o Else, if the ages of the two instances differ by more than MaxAgeDiff, the instance having the smaller (younger) age is considered to be more recent. o Else, the two instances are considered to be identical. 13.2. Installing link state advertisements in the database Installing a new link state advertisement in the database, either as the result of flooding or a newly self originated advertisement, may cause the routing table structure to be recalculated. The contents of the new advertisement should be compared to the old instance, if present. If there is no difference, there is no need to recalculate the routing table. (Note that even if the contents are the same, the LS checksum will probably be different, since the checksum covers the LS sequence number.) If the contents are different, the following pieces of the rout- ing table must be recalculated, depending on the LS type field: Router links, network links The entire routing table must be recalculated, starting with the shortest path calculations for each area (not just the area whose topological database has changed). The reason that the shortest path calculation cannot be restricted to the single changed area has to do with the fact that AS boundary routers may belong to multiple areas. A change in the area currently providing the best route may force the router to use an intra-area route provided by a different area.[16] Summary link The best route to the destination described by the summary link advertisement must be re-examined (see Section 16.5). If this destination is an AS boundary router, it may also be necessary to re-examine all the AS external link advertise- ments. AS external link The best route to the destination described by the AS exter- nal link advertisement must be re-examined (see Section 16.6). [Moy] [Page 128] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 Also, any old instance of the advertisement must be removed from the database when the new advertisement is installed. This old instance must also be removed from all neighbors' Link state retransmission lists (see Section 10). 13.3. Next step in the flooding procedure When a new (and more recent) advertisement has been received, it must be flooded out some set of the router's interfaces. This section describes the second part of flooding procedure (the first part being the processing that occurred in Section 13), namely, selecting the outgoing interfaces and adding the adver- tisement to the appropriate neighbors' Link state retransmission lists. Also included in this part of the flooding procedure is the maintenance of the neighbors' Link state request lists. This section is equally applicable to the flooding of an adver- tisement that the router itself has just originated (see Section 12.4). For these advertisements, this section provides the entirety of the flooding procedure (i.e., the processing of Sec- tion 13 is not performed, since, for example, the advertisement has not been received from a neighbor and therefore does not need to be acknowledged). Depending upon the advertisement's LS type, the advertisement can be flooded out only certain interfaces. These interfaces, defined by the following, are called the eligible interfaces: AS external links (LS Type = 5) AS external links are flooded throughout the entire AS, with the exception of stub areas (see Section 3.6). The eligible interfaces are all the router's interfaces, excluding vir- tual links and those interfaces attaching to stub areas. All other types All other types are specific to a single area (Area A). The eligible interfaces are all those interfaces attaching to the Area A. If Area A is the backbone, this includes all the virtual links. Link state databases must remain synchronized over all adjacen- cies associated with the above eligible interfaces. This is accomplished by executing the following steps on each eligible interface. It should be noted that this procedure may decide not to flood a link state advertisement out a particular [Moy] [Page 129] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 interface, if there is a high probability that the attached neighbors have already received the advertisement. However, in these cases the flooding procedure must be absolutely sure that the neighbors eventually do receive the advertisement, so the advertisement is still added to each adjacency's Link state retransmission list. For each eligible interface: (1) Each of the neighbors attached to this interface are exam- ined, to determine whether they must receive the new adver- tisement. The following steps are executed for each neigh- bor: (a) If the neighbor is in a lesser state than Exchange, it does not participate in flooding, and the next neighbor should be examined. (b) Else, if the adjacency is not yet full (neighbor state is Exchange or Loading), examine the Link state request list associated with this adjacency. If there is an instance of the new advertisement on the list, it indi- cates that the neighboring router has an instance of the advertisement already. Compare the new advertisement to the neighbor's copy: o If the new advertisement is less recent, then try the next neighbor. o If the two copies are the same instance, then delete the advertisement from the Link state request list, and try the next neighbor.[17] o Else, the new advertisement is more recent. Delete the advertisement from the Link state request list. (c) If the new advertisement was received from this neigh- bor, try the next neighbor. (d) At this point we are not positive that the new neighbor has an up-to-date instance of this new advertisement. Add the new advertisement to the Link state retransmis- sion list for the adjacency. This ensures that the flooding procedure is reliable; the advertisement will be retransmitted at intervals until an acknowledgment is seen from the neighbor. (2) The router must now decide whether to flood the new link state advertisement out this interface. If in the previous [Moy] [Page 130] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 step, the link state advertisement was NOT added to any of the Link state retransmission lists, there is no need to flood the advertisement and the next interface should be examined. (3) If the new advertisement was received on this interface, and it was received from either the Designated Router or the Backup Designated Router, chances are all the neighbors have received the advertisement already. Therefore, examine the next interface. (4) If the new advertisement was received on this interface, and the interface state is Backup (i.e., the router itself is the Backup Designated Router), examine the next interface. The Designated Router will do the flooding on this inter- face. If the Designated Router fails, this router will end up retransmitting the updates. (5) If this step is reached, the advertisement must be flooded out the interface. Send a Link State Update packet (with the new advertisement as contents) out the interface. The advertisement's LS age must be incremented by InfTransDelay (which must be > 0) when copied into the outgoing packet (until the LS age field reaches its maximum value of Max- Age). On broadcast networks, the Link State Update packets are multicast. The destination IP address specified for the Link State Update Packet depends on the state of the inter- face. If the interface state is DR or Backup, the address AllSPFRouters should be used. Otherwise, the address AllDRouters should be used. On non-broadcast, multi-access networks, separate Link State Update packets must be sent, as unicasts, to each adjacent neighbor (i.e., those in state Exchange or greater). The destination IP addresses for these packets are the neigh- bors' IP addresses. 13.4. Receiving self-originated link state It is a common occurrence to receive a self-originated link state advertisement via the flooding procedure. If the adver- tisement received is a newer instance than the last instance that the router actually originated, the router must take spe- cial action. [Moy] [Page 131] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 The reception of such an advertisement indicates that there are link state advertisements in the routing domain that were ori- ginated before the last time the router was restarted. In this case, the router must advance the sequence number for the adver- tisement one past the received sequence number, and originate a new instance of the advertisement. Note also that if the type of the advertisement is Summary link or AS external link, the router may no longer have an (advertis- able) route to the destination. In this case, the advertisement should be flushed from the routing domain by incrementing the advertisement's LS age to MaxAge and reflooding (see Section 14.1). 13.5. Sending Link State Acknowledgment packets Each newly received link state advertisement must be ack- nowledged. This is usually done by sending Link State Ack- nowledgment packets. However, acknowledgments can also be accomplished implicitly by sending Link State Update packets (see step 7a of Section 13). Many acknowledgments may be grouped together into a single Link State Acknowledgment packet. Such a packet is sent back out the interface that has received the advertisements. The packet can be sent in one of two ways: delayed and sent on an interval timer, or sent directly (as a unicast) to a particular neighbor. The particular acknowledgment strategy used depends on the cir- cumstances surrounding the receipt of the advertisement. Sending delayed acknowledgments accomplishes several things: it facilitates the packaging of multiple acknowledgments in a sin- gle packet; it enables a single packet to indicate acknowledg- ments to several neighbors at once (through multicasting); and it randomizes the acknowledgment packets sent by the various routers attached to a multi-access network. The fixed interval between a router's delayed transmissions must be short (less than RxmtInterval) or needless retransmissions will ensue. Direct acknowledgments are sent to a particular neighbor in response to the receipt of duplicate link state advertisements. These acknowledgments are sent as unicasts, and are sent immedi- ately when the duplicate is received. The precise procedure for sending Link State Acknowledgment packets is described in Table 19. The circumstances surrounding the receipt of the advertisement are listed in the left column. [Moy] [Page 132] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 The acknowledgment action then taken is listed in one of the two right columns. This action depends on the state of the con- cerned interface; interfaces in state Backup behave differently from interfaces in all other states. Delayed acknowledgments Action taken in state Circumstances Backup All other states ______________________________________________________________ Advertisement has No acknowledgment No acknowledgment been flooded back sent. sent. out receiving in- terface (see Sec- tion 13, step 5b). ______________________________________________________________ Advertisement is Delayed ack- Delayed ack- more recent than nowledgment sent nowledgment sent. database copy, but if advertisement was not flooded received from DR, back out receiving otherwise do noth- interface ing ______________________________________________________________ Advertisement is a Delayed ack- No acknowledgment duplicate, and was nowledgment sent sent. treated as an im- if advertisement plied acknowledg- received from DR, ment (see Section otherwise do noth- 13, step 7a). ing ______________________________________________________________ Advertisement is a Direct acknowledg- Direct acknowledg- duplicate, and was ment sent. ment sent. not treated as an implied ack- nowledgment. ______________________________________________________________ Advertisement's age Direct acknowledg- Direct acknowledg- is equal to MaxAge, ment sent. ment sent. and there is no current instance of the advertisement in the link state database (see Section 13, step 4). Table 19: Sending link state acknowledgements. [Moy] [Page 133] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 must be delivered to all adjacent routers associated with the interface. On broadcast networks, this is accomplished by send- ing the delayed Link State Acknowledgment packets as multicasts. The Destination IP address used depends on the state of the interface. If the state is DR or Backup, the destination AllSPFRouters is used. In other states, the destination AllDRouters is used. On non-broadcast networks, delayed acks must be unicast separately over each adjacency (neighbor whose state is >= Exchange). The reasoning behind sending the above packets as multicasts is best explained by an example. Consider the network configura- tion depicted in Figure 15. Suppose RT4 has been elected as DR, and RT3 as Backup for the network N3. When router RT4 floods a new advertisement to network N3, it is received by routers RT1, RT2, and RT3. These routers will not flood the advertisement back onto net N3, but they still must ensure that their topolog- ical databases remain synchronized with their adjacent neigh- bors. So RT1, RT2, and RT4 are waiting to see an acknowledgment from RT3. Likewise, RT4 and RT3 are both waiting to see ack- nowledgments from RT1 and RT2. This is best achieved by sending the acknowledgments as multicasts. The reason that the acknowledgment logic for Backup DRs is slightly different is because they perform differently during the flooding of link state advertisements (see Section 13.3, step 4). 13.6. Retransmitting link state advertisements Advertisements flooded out an adjacency are placed on the adjacency's Link state retransmission list. In order to ensure that flooding is reliable, these advertisements are retransmit- ted until they are acknowledged. The length of time between retransmissions is a configurable per-interface value, RxmtIn- terval. If this is set too low for an interface, needless retransmissions will ensue. If the value is set too high, the speed of the flooding, in the face of lost packets, may be affected. Several retransmitted advertisements may fit into a single Link State Update packet. When advertisements are to be retransmit- ted, only the number fitting in a single Link State Update packet should be transmitted. Another packet of retransmissions can be sent when some of the advertisements are acknowledged, or on the next firing of the retransmission timer. [Moy] [Page 134] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 Link State Update Packets carrying retransmissions are always sent as unicasts (directly to the physical address of the neigh- bor). They are never sent as multicasts. Each advertisement's LS age must be incremented by InfTransDelay (which must be > 0) when copied into the outgoing packet (until the LS age field reaches its maximum value of MaxAge). If the adjacent router goes down, retransmissions may occur until the adjacency is destroyed by OSPF's Hello Protocol. When the adjacency is destroyed, the Link state retransmission list is cleared. 13.7. Receiving link state acknowledgments Many consistency checks have been made on a received Link State Acknowledgment packet before it is handed to the flooding pro- cedure. In particular, it has been associated with a particular neighbor. If this neighbor is in a lesser state than Exchange, the packet is discarded. Otherwise, for each acknowledgment in the packet, the following steps are performed: o Does the advertisement acknowledged have an instance on the Link state retransmission list for the neighbor? If not, examine the next acknowledgment. Otherwise: o If the acknowledgment is for the same instance that is con- tained on the list, remove the item from the list and exam- ine the next acknowledgment. Otherwise: o Log the questionable acknowledgment, and examine the next one. 14. Aging The Link State Database Each link state advertisement has an age field. The age is expressed in seconds. An advertisement's age field is incremented while it is contained in a router's database. Also, when copied into a Link State Update Packet for flooding out a particular inter- face, the advertisement's age is incremented by InfTransDelay. An advertisement's age is never incremented past the value MaxAge. Advertisements having age MaxAge are not used in the routing table calculation. As a router ages its link state database, an [Moy] [Page 135] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 advertisement's age may reach MaxAge.[18] At this time, the router must attempt to flush the advertisement from the routing domain. This is done simply by reflooding the MaxAge advertisement just as if it was a newly originated advertisement (see Section 13.3). When a Database summary list for a newly adjacent neighbor is formed, any MaxAge advertisements present in the link state database are added to the neighbor's Link state retransmission list instead of the neighbor's Database summary list. See Section 10.3 for more details. A MaxAge advertisement is removed entirely from the router's link state database when a) it is no longer contained on any neighbor Link state retransmission lists and b) none of the router's neigh- bors are in states Exchange or Loading. When, in the process of aging the link state database, an advertisement's age hits a multiple of CheckAge, its checksum should be verified. If the checksum is incorrect, a program or memory error has been detected, and at the very least the router itself should be restarted. 14.1. Premature aging of advertisements A link state advertisement can be flushed from the routing domain by setting its age to MaxAge and reflooding the adver- tisement. This procedure follows the same course as flushing an advertisement whose age has naturally reached the value MaxAge (see Section 14). In particular, the MaxAge advertisement is removed from the router's link state database as soon as a) it is no longer contained on any neighbor Link state retransmission lists and b) none of the router's neighbors are in states Exchange or Loading. We call the setting of an advertisement's age to MaxAge premature aging. Premature aging is used when it is time for a self-originated advertisement's sequence number field to wrap. At this point, the current advertisement instance (having LS sequence number of 0x7fffffff) must be prematurely aged and flushed from the rout- ing domain before a new instance with sequence number 0x80000001 can be originated. See Section 12.1.6 for more information. Premature aging can also be used when, for example, one of the router's previously advertised external routes is no longer reachable. In this circumstance, the router can flush its external advertisement from the routing domain via premature aging. This procedure is preferable to the alternative, which [Moy] [Page 136] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 is to originate a new advertisement for the destination specify- ing a metric of LSInfinity. A router may only prematurely age its own (self-originated) link state advertisements. These are the link state advertisements having the router's own OSPF Router ID in the Advertising Router field. 15. Virtual Links The single backbone area (Area ID = 0) cannot be disconnected, or some areas of the Autonomous System will become unreachable. To establish/maintain connectivity of the backbone, virtual links can be configured through non-backbone areas. Virtual links serve to connect separate components of the backbone. The two endpoints of a virtual link are area border routers. The virtual link must be con- figured in both routers. The configuration information in each router consists of the other virtual endpoint (the other area border router), and the non-backbone area the two routers have in common (called the transit area). Virtual links cannot be configured through stub areas (see Section 3.6). The virtual link is treated as if it were an unnumbered point-to- point network (belonging to the backbone) joining the two area border routers. An attempt is made to establish an adjacency over the virtual link. When this adjacency is established, the virtual link will be included in backbone router links advertisements, and OSPF packets pertaining to the backbone area will flow over the adjacency. Such an adjacency has been referred to as a "virtual adjacency". In each endpoint router, the cost and viability of the virtual link is discovered by examining the routing table entry for the other endpoint router. (The entry's associated area must be the config- ured transit area). Actually, there may be a separate routing table entry for each Type of Service. These are called the virtual link's corresponding routing table entries. The Interface Up event occurs for a virtual link when its corresponding TOS 0 routing table entry becomes reachable. Conversely, the Interface Down event occurs when its TOS 0 routing table entry becomes unreachable.[19] In other words, the virtual link's viability is determined by the existence of an intra-area path, through the transit area, between the two endpoints. Note that a virtual link whose underlying path has cost greater than hexadecimal 0xffff (the maximum size of an interface cost in a router links advertisement) should be considered inopera- tional (i.e., treated the same as if the path did not exist). [Moy] [Page 137] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 The other details concerning virtual links are as follows: o AS external links are NEVER flooded over virtual adjacencies. This would be duplication of effort, since the same AS external links are already flooded throughout the virtual link's transit area. For this same reason, AS external link advertisements are not summarized over virtual adjacencies during the database exchange process. o The cost of a virtual link is NOT configured. It is defined to be the cost of the intra-area path between the two defining area border routers. This cost appears in the virtual link's corresponding routing table entry. When the cost of a virtual link changes, a new router links advertisement should be ori- ginated for the backbone area. o Just as the virtual link's cost and viability are determined by the routing table build process (through construction of the routing table entry for the other endpoint), so are the IP interface address for the virtual interface and the virtual neighbor's IP address. These are used when sending protocol packets over the virtual link. Note that when one (or both) of the virtual link endpoints connect to the transit area via an unnumbered point-to-point link, it may be impossible to calcu- late either the virtual interface's IP address and/or the vir- tual neighbor's IP address, causing the virtual link to fail. o In each endpoint's router links advertisement for the backbone, the virtual link is represented as a link having link type 4, Link ID set to the virtual neighbor's OSPF Router ID and Link Data set to the virtual interface's IP address. See Section 12.4.1 for more information. Note that it may be the case that there is a TOS 0 path, but no non-zero TOS paths, between the two endpoint routers. In this case, both routers must revert to being non-TOS-capable, clearing the T-bit in the Options field of their backbone router links advertisements. o When virtual links are configured for the backbone, information concerning backbone networks should not be condensed before being summarized for the transit areas. In other words, each backbone network should be advertised into the transit areas in a separate summary link advertisement, regardless of the backbone's configured area address ranges. See Section 12.4.3 for more information. o The time between link state retransmissions, RxmtInterval, is configured for a virtual link. This should be well over the expected round-trip delay between the two routers. This may be [Moy] [Page 138] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 hard to estimate for a virtual link. It is better to err on the side of making it too large. 16. Calculation Of The Routing Table This section details the OSPF routing table calculation. Using its attached areas' link state databases as input, a router runs the following algorithm, building its routing table step by step. At each step, the router must access individual pieces of the link state databases (e.g., a router links advertisement originated by a certain router). This access is performed by the lookup function discussed in Section 12.2. The lookup process may return a link state advertisement whose LS age is equal to MaxAge. Such an adver- tisement should not be used in the routing table calculation, and is treated just as if the lookup process had failed. The OSPF routing table's organization is explained in Section 11. Two examples of the routing table build process are presented in Sections 11.2 and 11.3. This process can be broken into the follow- ing steps: (1) The present routing table is invalidated. The routing table is built again from scratch. The old routing table is saved so that changes in routing table entries can be identified. (2) The intra-area routes are calculated by building the shortest- path tree for each attached area. In particular, all routing table entries whose Destination type is "area border router" are calculated in this step. This step is described in two parts. At first the tree is constructed by only considering those links between routers and transit networks. Then the stub networks are incorporated into the tree. During the area's shortest-path tree calculation, the area's Transit capability is also calcu- lated for later use in Step 4. (3) The inter-area routes are calculated, through examination of summary link advertisements. If the router is attached to mul- tiple areas (i.e., it is an area border router), only backbone summary link advertisements are examined. (4) In area border routers connecting to one or more transit areas (i.e, non-backbone areas whose Transit capability is found to be TRUE), the transit areas' summary links are examined to see whether better paths exist using the transit areas than were found in Steps 2-3 above. [Moy] [Page 139] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 (5) Routes to external destinations are calculated, through examina- tion of AS external link advertisements. The location of the AS boundary routers (which originate the AS external link adver- tisements) has been determined in steps 2-4. Steps 2-5 are explained in further detail below. The explanations describe the calculations for TOS 0 only. It may also be necessary to perform each step (separately) for each of the non-zero TOS values.[20] For more information concerning the building of non-zero TOS routes see Section 16.9. Changes made to routing table entries as a result of these calcula- tions can cause the OSPF protocol to take further actions. For example, a change to an intra-area route will cause an area border router to originate new summary link advertisements (see Section 12.4). See Section 16.7 for a complete list of the OSPF protocol actions resulting from routing table table changes. 16.1. Calculating the shortest-path tree for an area This calculation yields the set of intra-area routes associated with an area (called hereafter Area A). A router calculates the shortest-path tree using itself as the root.[21] The formation of the shortest path tree is done here in two stages. In the first stage, only links between routers and transit networks are considered. Using the Dijkstra algorithm, a tree is formed from this subset of the link state database. In the second stage, leaves are added to the tree by considering the links to stub networks. The procedure will be explained using the graph terminology that was introduced in Section 2. The area's link state database is represented as a directed graph. The graph's vertices are routers, transit networks and stub networks. The first stage of the procedure concerns only the transit vertices (routers and transit networks) and their connecting links. Throughout the shortest path calculation, the following data is also associated with each transit vertex: Vertex (node) ID A 32-bit number uniquely identifying the vertex. For router vertices this is the OSPF Router ID. For network vertices, this is the IP address of the network's Designated Router. [Moy] [Page 140] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 A link state advertisement Each transit vertex has an associated link state advertise- ment. For router vertices, this is a router links adver- tisement. For transit networks, this is a network links advertisement (which is actually originated by the network's Designated Router). In any case, the advertisement's Link State ID is always equal to the above Vertex ID. List of next hops The list of next hops for the current set of shortest paths from the root to this vertex. There can be multiple shor- test paths due to the equal-cost multipath capability. Each next hop indicates the outgoing router interface to use when forwarding traffic to the destination. On multi-access net- works, the next hop also includes the IP address of the next router (if any) in the path towards the destination. Distance from root The link state cost of the current set of shortest paths from the root to the vertex. The link state cost of a path is calculated as the sum of the costs of the path's consti- tuent links (as advertised in router links and network links advertisements). One path is said to be "shorter" than another if it has a smaller link state cost. The first stage of the procedure (i.e., the Dijkstra algorithm) can now be summarized as follows. At each iteration of the algo- rithm, there is a list of candidate vertices. Paths from the root to these vertices have been found, but not necessarily the shortest ones. However, the paths to the candidate vertex that is closest to the root are guaranteed to be shortest; this ver- tex is added to the shortest-path tree, removed from the candi- date list, and its adjacent vertices are examined for possible addition to/modification of the candidate list. The algorithm then iterates again. It terminates when the candidate list becomes empty. The following steps describe the first stage in detail. Remember that we are computing the shortest path tree for Area A. All references to link state database lookup below are from Area A's database. (1) Initialize the algorithm's data structures. Clear the list of candidate vertices. Initialize the shortest-path tree to only the root (which is the router doing the calculation). Set Area A's Transit Capability to FALSE. [Moy] [Page 141] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 (2) Call the vertex just added to the tree vertex V. Examine the link state advertisement associated with vertex V. This is a lookup in the Area A's link state database based on the Vertex ID. If this is a router links advertisement, and bit V of the router links advertisement (see Section A.4.2) is set, set Area A's Transit capability to TRUE. In any case, each link described by the advertisement gives the cost to an adjacent vertex. For each described link, (say it joins vertex V to vertex W): (a) If this is a link to a stub network, examine the next link in V's advertisement. Links to stub networks will be considered in the second stage of the shortest path calculation. (b) Otherwise, W is a transit vertex (router or transit net- work). Look up the vertex W's link state advertisement (router links or network links) in Area A's link state database. If the advertisement does not exist, or its age is equal to MaxAge, or it does not have a link back to vertex V, examine the next link in V's advertisement. Both ends of a link must advertise the link before it will be used for data traffic.[22] (c) If vertex W is already on the shortest-path tree, exam- ine the next link in the advertisement. (d) Calculate the link state cost D of the resulting path from the root to vertex W. D is equal to the sum of the link state cost of the (already calculated) shortest path to vertex V and the advertised cost of the link between vertices V and W. If D is: o Greater than the value that already appears for ver- tex W on the candidate list, then examine the next link. o Equal to the value that appears for vertex W on the the candidate list, calculate the set of next hops that result from using the advertised link. Input to this calculation is the destination (W), and its parent (V). This calculation is shown in Section 16.1.1. This set of hops should be added to the next hop values that appear for W on the candidate list. o Less than the value that appears for vertex W on the the candidate list, or if W does not yet appear on [Moy] [Page 142] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 the candidate list, then set the entry for W on the candidate list to indicate a distance of D from the root. Also calculate the list of next hops that result from using the advertised link, setting the next hop values for W accordingly. The next hop calculation is described in Section 16.1.1; it takes as input the destination (W) and its parent (V). (3) If at this step the candidate list is empty, the shortest- path tree (of transit vertices) has been completely built and this stage of the algorithm terminates. Otherwise, choose the vertex belonging to the candidate list that is closest to the root, and add it to the shortest-path tree (removing it from the candidate list in the process). Note that when there is a choice of vertices closest to the root, network vertices must be chosen before router vertices in order to necessarily find all equal-cost paths. This is con- sistent with the tie-breakers that were introduced in the modified Dijkstra algorithm in [MOSPF]. (4) Possibly modify the routing table. For those routing table entries modified, the associated area will be set to Area A, the path type will be set to intra-area, and the cost will be set to the newly discovered shortest path's calculated distance. If the newly added vertex is an area border router (call it ABR), a routing table entry is added whose destination type is "area border router". The Options field found in the associated router links advertisement is copied into the routing table entry's Optional capabilities field. If in addition ABR is an endpoint of a configured virtual link that uses Area A as its transit area: the virtual link is declared up, the IP address of the virtual interface is set to the IP address of the outgoing interface calculated above for ABR, and the virtual neighbor's IP address is set to the ABR interface address (contained in ABR's router links advertisement) that points back to the root of the shortest-path tree; equivalently, this is the interface that points back to ABR's parent vertex on the shortest-path tree (similar to the calculation in Section 16.1.1). If the newly added vertex is an AS boundary router, the routing table entry of type "AS boundary router" for the destination is located. Since routers can belong to more than one area, it is possible that several sets of intra- area paths exist to the AS boundary router, each set using a different area. However, the AS boundary router's routing [Moy] [Page 143] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 table entry must indicate a set of paths which utilize a single area. The area leading to the routing table entry is selected as follows: A set of intra-area paths having no virtual next hops is always preferred over a set of intra- area paths in which some virtual next hops appear[23] ; all other things being equal the set of paths having lower cost is preferred. Note that whenever an AS boundary router's routing table entry is added/modified, the Options found in the associated router links advertisement is copied into the routing table entry's Optional capabilities field. If the newly added vertex is a transit network, the routing table entry for the network is located. The entry's desti- nation ID is the IP network number, which can be obtained by masking the Vertex ID (Link State ID) with its associated subnet mask (found in the associated network links adver- tisement). If the routing table entry already exists (i.e., there is already an intra-area route to the destination installed in the routing table), multiple vertices have mapped to the same IP network. For example, this can occur when a new Designated Router is being established. In this case, the current routing table entry should be overwritten if and only if the newly found path is just as short and the current routing table entry's Link State Origin has a smaller Link State ID than the newly added vertex' link state advertisement. If there is no routing table entry for the network (the usual case), a routing table entry for the IP network should be added. The routing table entry's Link State origin should be set to the newly added vertex' link state adver- tisement. (5) Iterate the algorithm by returning to Step 2. The stub networks are added to the tree in the procedure's second stage. In this stage, all router vertices are again examined. Those that have been determined to be unreachable in the above first phase are discarded. For each reachable router vertex (call it V), the associated router links advertisement is found in the link state database. Each stub network link appearing in the advertisement is then examined, and the follow- ing steps are executed: (1) Calculate the distance D of stub network from the root. D is equal to the distance from the root to the router vertex [Moy] [Page 144] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 (calculated in stage 1), plus the stub network link's adver- tised cost. Compare this distance to the current best cost to the stub network. This is done by looking up the network's current routing table entry. If the calculated distance D is larger, go on to examine the next stub network link in the advertisement. (2) If this step is reached, the stub network's routing table entry must be updated. Calculate the set of next hops that would result from using the stub network link. This calcu- lation is shown in Section 16.1.1; input to this calculation is the destination (the stub network) and the parent vertex (the router vertex). If the distance D is the same as the current routing table cost, simply add this set of next hops to the routing table entry's list of next hops. In this case, the routing table already has a Link State origin. If this Link State origin is a router links advertisement whose Link State ID is smaller than V's Router ID, reset the Link State origin to V's router links advertisement. Otherwise D is smaller than the routing table cost. Overwrite the current routing table entry by setting the routing table entry's cost to D, and by setting the entry's list of next hops to the newly calculated set. Set the routing table entry's Link State origin to V's router links advertisement. Then go on to examine the next stub network link. For all routing table entries added/modified in the second stage, the associated area will be set to Area A and the path type will be set to intra-area. When the list of reachable router links is exhausted, the second stage is completed. At this time, all intra-area routes associated with Area A have been determined. The specification does not require that the above two stage method be used to calculate the shortest path tree. However, if another algorithm is used, an identical tree must be produced. For this reason, it is important to note that links between transit vertices must be bidirectional in ordered to be included in the above tree. It should also be mentioned that algorithms exist for incrementally updating the shortest-path tree (see [BBN]). [Moy] [Page 145] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 16.1.1. The next hop calculation This section explains how to calculate the current set of next hops to use for a destination. Each next hop consists of the outgoing interface to use in forwarding packets to the destination together with the next hop router (if any). The next hop calculation is invoked each time a shorter path to the destination is discovered. This can happen in either stage of the shortest-path tree calculation (see Section 16.1). In stage 1 of the shortest-path tree calculation a shorter path is found as the destination is added to the candidate list, or when the destination's entry on the can- didate list is modified (Step 2d of Stage 1). In stage 2 a shorter path is discovered each time the destination's rout- ing table entry is modified (Step 2 of Stage 2). The set of next hops to use for the destination may be recalculated several times during the shortest-path tree calculation, as shorter and shorter paths are discovered. In the end, the destination's routing table entry will always reflect the next hops resulting from the absolute shortest path(s). Input to the next hop calculation is a) the destination and b) its parent in the current shortest path between the root (the calculating router) and the destination. The parent is always a transit vertex (i.e., always a router or a transit network). If there is at least one intervening router in the current shortest path between the destination and the root, the des- tination simply inherits the set of next hops from the parent. Otherwise, there are two cases. In the first case, the parent vertex is the root (the calculating router itself). This means that the destination is either a directly connected network or directly connected router. The next hop in this case is simply the OSPF interface con- necting to the network/router; no next hop router is required. If the connecting OSPF interface in this case is a virtual link, the setting of the next hop should be deferred until the calculation in Section 16.3. In the second case, the parent vertex is a network that directly connects the calculating router to the destination router. The list of next hops is then determined by examin- ing the destination's router links advertisement. For each link in the advertisement that points back to the parent network, the link's Link Data field provides the IP address [Moy] [Page 146] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 of a next hop router. The outgoing interface to use can then be derived from the next hop IP address (or it can be inherited from the parent network). 16.2. Calculating the inter-area routes The inter-area routes are calculated by examining summary link advertisements. If the router has active attachments to multi- ple areas, only backbone summary link advertisements are exam- ined. Routers attached to a single area examine that area's summary links. In either case, the summary links examined below are all part of a single area's link state database (call it Area A). Summary link advertisements are originated by the area border routers. Each summary link advertisement in Area A is con- sidered in turn. Remember that the destination described by a summary link advertisement is either a network (type 3 summary link advertisements) or an AS boundary router (type 4 summary link advertisements). For each summary link advertisement: (1) If the cost specified by the advertisement is LSInfinity, or if the advertisement's LS age is equal to MaxAge, then exam- ine the the next advertisement. (2) If the advertisement was originated by the calculating router itself, examine the next advertisement. (3) If the collection of destinations described by the summary link falls into one of the router's configured area address ranges (see Section 3.5) and the particular area address range is active, the summary link should be ignored. Active means that there are one or more reachable (by intra-area paths) networks contained in the area range. In this case, all addresses in the area range are assumed to be either reachable via intra-area paths, or else to be unreachable by any other means. (4) Else, call the destination described by the advertisement N (for type 3 summary links, N's address is obtained by mask- ing the advertisement's Link State ID with the network/subnet mask contained in the body of the advertise- ment), and the area border originating the advertisement BR. Look up the routing table entry for BR having A as its asso- ciated area. If no such entry exists for router BR (i.e., BR is unreachable in Area A), do nothing with this [Moy] [Page 147] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 advertisement and consider the next in the list. Else, this advertisement describes an inter-area path to destination N, whose cost is the distance to BR plus the cost specified in the advertisement. Call the cost of this inter-area path IAC. (5) Next, look up the routing table entry for the destination N. (The entry's Destination type is either Network or AS boun- dary router.) If no entry exists for N or if the entry's path type is "AS external", install the inter-area path to N, with associated area A, cost IAC, next hop equal to the list of next hops to router BR, and advertising router equal to BR. (6) Else, if the paths present in the table are intra-area paths, do nothing with the advertisement (intra-area paths are always preferred). (7) Else, the paths present in the routing table are also inter-area paths. Install the new path through BR if it is cheaper, overriding the paths in the routing table. Other- wise, if the new path is the same cost, add it to the list of paths that appear in the routing table entry. 16.3. Examining transit areas' summary links This step is only performed by area border routers attached to one or more transit areas. Transit areas are those areas sup- porting one or more virtual links; their Transit Capability parameter has been set to TRUE in Step 2 of the Dijkstra algo- rithm (see Section 16.1). They are the only non-backbone areas that can carry data traffic that neither originates nor ter- minates in the area itself. The purpose of the calculation below is to examine the transit areas to see whether they provide any better (shorter) paths than the paths previously calculated in Sections 16.1 and 16.2. Any paths found that are better or equal to previously discovered paths are installed in the routing table. The calculation proceeds as follows. All the transit areas' sum- mary link advertisements are examined in turn. Each such sum- mary link describes a route through a transit Area A to a Net- work N (N's address is obtained by masking the advertisement's Link State ID with the network/subnet mask contained in the body of the advertisement) or in the case of a type 4 summary link, to an AS boundary router N. Suppose also that the summary link [Moy] [Page 148] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 was originated by an area border router BR. (1) If the cost advertised by the summary link is LSInfinity, or if the advertisement's LS age is equal to MaxAge, then exam- ine the next advertisement. (2) If the summary link was originated by the calculating router itself, examine the next advertisement. (3) Look up the routing table entry for N. If it does not exist, or if the route type is other than intra-area or inter-area, or if the area associated with the routing table entry is not the backbone area, then examine the next advertisement. In other words, this calculation only updates backbone Dijkstra routes found in Section 16.1 and inter-area routes found in Section 16.2. (4) Look up the routing table entry for the advertising router BR associated with the Area A. If it is unreachable, examine the next advertisement. Otherwise, the cost to destination N is the sum of the cost in BR's Area A routing table entry and the cost advertised in the advertisement. Call this cost IAC. (5) If this cost is less than the cost occurring in N's routing table entry, overwrite N's list of next hops with those used for BR, and set N's routing table cost to IAC. Else, if IAC is the same as N's current cost, add BR's list of next hops to N's list of next hops. In any case, the area associated with N's routing table entry must remain the backbone area, and the path type (either intra-area or inter-area) must also remain the same. It is important to note that the above calculation never makes unreachable destinations reachable, but instead just potentially finds better paths to already reachable destinations. Also, unlike Section 16.3 of [RFC 1247], the above calculation installs any better cost found into the routing table entry, from which it may be readvertised in summary link advertisements to other areas. As an example of the calculation, consider the Autonomous System pictured in Figure 17. There is a single non-backbone area (Area 1) that physically divides the backbone into two separate pieces. To maintain connectivity of the backbone, a virtual link has been configured between routers RT1 and RT4. On the right side of the figure, network N1 belongs to the backbone. The dot- ted lines indicate that there is a much shorter intra-area [Moy] [Page 149] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 ........................ . Area 1 (transit) . + . . | . +---+1 1+---+100 | . |RT2|----------|RT4|=========| . 1/+---+********* +---+ | . /******* . | . 1/*Virtual . | 1+---+/* Link . Net|work =======|RT1|* . | N1 +---+\ . | . \ . | . \ . | . 1\+---+1 1+---+20 | . |RT3|----------|RT5|=========| . +---+ +---+ | . . | ........................ + Figure 17: Routing through transit areas backbone path between router RT5 and network N1 (cost 20) than there is between router RT4 and network N1 (cost 100). Both router RT4 and router RT5 will inject summary link advertise- ments for network N1 into Area 1. After the shortest-path tree has been calculated for the back- bone in Section 16.1, router RT1 (left end of the virtual link) will have calculated a path through router RT4 for all data traffic destined for network N1. However, since router RT5 is so much closer to network N1, all routers internal to Area 1 (e.g., routers RT2 and RT3) will forward their network N1 traffic towards router RT5, instead of RT4. And indeed, after examining Area 1's summary links by the above calculation, router RT1 will also forward network N1 traffic towards RT5. Note that in this example the virtual link enables network N1 traffic to be for- warded through the transit Area 1, but the actual path the data traffic takes does not follow the virtual link. In other words, virtual links allow transit traffic to be forwarded through an area, but do not dictate the precise path that the traffic will take. 16.4. Calculating AS external routes AS external routes are calculated by examining AS external link advertisements. Each of the AS external link advertisements is [Moy] [Page 150] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 considered in turn. Most AS external advertisements describe routes to specific IP destinations. An AS external advertise- ment can also describe a default route for the Autonomous System (destination = DefaultDestination). For each AS external link advertisement: (1) If the cost specified by the advertisement is LSInfinity, or if the advertisement's LS age is equal to MaxAge, then exam- ine the next advertisement. (2) If the advertisement was originated by the calculating router itself, examine the next advertisement. (3) Call the destination described by the advertisement N. N's address is obtained by masking the advertisement's Link State ID with the network/subnet mask contained in the body of the advertisement. Look up the routing table entry for the AS boundary router (ASBR) that originated the advertise- ment. If no entry exists for router ASBR (i.e., ASBR is unreachable), do nothing with this advertisement and con- sider the next in the list. Else, this advertisement describes an AS external path to destination N. Examine the forwarding address specified in the external advertisement. This indicates the IP address to which packets for the destination should be forwarded. If forwarding address is set to 0.0.0.0, packets should be sent to the ASBR itself. Otherwise, look up the forwarding address in the routing table.[24] An intra-area or inter- area path must exist to the forwarding address. If no such path exists, do nothing with the advertisement and consider the next in the list. Call the routing table distance to the forwarding address X (when the forwarding address is set to 0.0.0.0, this is the distance to the ASBR itself), and the cost specified in the advertisement Y. X is in terms of the link state metric, and Y is a Type 1 or 2 external metric. (4) Next, look up the routing table entry for the destination N. If no entry exists for N, install the AS external path to N, with next hop equal to the list of next hops to the forward- ing address, and advertising router equal to ASBR. If the external metric type is 1, then the path-type is set to type 1 external and the cost is equal to X+Y. If the external metric type is 2, the the path-type is set to type 2 exter- nal, the link state component of the route's cost is X, and [Moy] [Page 151] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 the Type 2 cost is Y. (5) Else, if the paths present in the table are not type 1 or type 2 external paths, do nothing (AS external paths have the lowest priority). (6) Otherwise, compare the cost of this new AS external path to the ones present in the table. Type 1 external paths are always shorter than Type 2 external paths. Type 1 external paths are compared by looking at the sum of the distance to the forwarding address and the advertised Type 1 metric (X+Y). Type 2 external paths are compared by looking at the advertised Type 2 metrics, and then if necessary, the dis- tance to the forwarding addresses. If the new path is shorter, it replaces the present paths in the routing table entry. If the new path is the same cost, it is added to the routing table entry's list of paths. 16.5. Incremental updates --- summary links When a new summary link advertisement is received, it is not necessary to recalculate the entire routing table. Call the destination described by the summary link advertisement N (N's address is obtained by masking the advertisement's Link State ID with the network/subnet mask contained in the body of the adver- tisement), and let Area A be the area to which the advertisement belongs. There are then two separate cases: o If Area A the backbone, or if the router is attached to a single area, the calculation in Section 16.2 is run again for a single routing table entry. Then, if the router is an area border router attached to one or more transit areas, the calculation in Section 16.3 must be run again for the single destination. Finally, if the results of these calcu- lations have changed the cost to an AS boundary router (as would be the case for a type 4 summary link) or to any for- warding addresses, the AS external links will have to be examined by rerunning the calculation in Section 16.4. o Otherwise, if Area A is a transit area (i.e., its Transit capability parameter is TRUE), the following calculations must be performed. There are two separate sub-cases: - If the new summary link specifies a lower cost than the previous instance (or if there was no previous instance of the summary link) the calculation in Section 16.3 [Moy] [Page 152] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 should be rerun for a single routing table entry, remov- ing those next hops belonging to Area A before the recalculation commences. If the results of this calcula- tion changes the cost to an AS boundary router or to any forwarding addresses, the AS external links will have to be examined by rerunning the calculation in Section 16.4. - On the other hand, if the new summary link specifies a larger cost than the previous instance, the complete routing table calculation must be rerun starting with the Dijkstra algorithm specified in Section 16.1. 16.6. Incremental updates --- AS external links When a new AS external link advertisement is received, it is not necessary to recalculate the entire routing table. Call the destination described by the AS external link advertisement N. N's address is obtained by masking the advertisement's Link State ID with the network/subnet mask contained in the body of the advertisement. If there is already an intra-area or inter- area route to the destination, no recalculation is necessary (internal routes take precedence). Otherwise, the procedure in Section 16.4 will have to be per- formed, but only for those AS external link advertisements whose destination is N. Before this procedure is performed, the present routing table entry for N should be invalidated. 16.7. Events generated as a result of routing table changes Changes to routing table entries sometimes cause the OSPF area border routers to take additional actions. These routers need to act on the following routing table changes: o The cost or path type of a routing table entry has changed. If the destination described by this entry is a Network or AS boundary router, and this is not simply a change of AS external routes, new summary link advertisements may have to be generated (potentially one for each attached area, including the backbone). See Section 12.4.3 for more infor- mation. If a previously advertised entry has been deleted, or is no longer advertisable to a particular area, the advertisement must be flushed from the routing domain by setting its age to MaxAge and reflooding (see Section 14.1). [Moy] [Page 153] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 o A routing table entry associated with a configured virtual link has changed. The destination of such a routing table entry is an area border router. The change indicates a modification to the virtual link's cost or viability. If the entry indicates that the area border router is newly reachable (via TOS 0), the corresponding virtual link is now operational. An Interface Up event should be generated for the virtual link, which will cause a virtual adjacency to begin to form (see Section 10.3). At this time the virtual interface's IP address and the virtual neighbor's IP address are also calculated. If the entry indicates that the area border router is no longer reachable (via TOS 0), the virtual link and its asso- ciated adjacency should be destroyed. This means an Inter- face Down event should be generated for the associated vir- tual link. If the cost of the entry has changed, and there is a fully established virtual adjacency, a new router links advertise- ment for the backbone must be originated. This in turn may cause further routing table changes. 16.8. Equal-cost multipath The OSPF protocol maintains multiple equal-cost routes to all destinations. This can be seen in the steps used above to cal- culate the routing table, and in the definition of the routing table structure. Each one of the multiple routes will be of the same type (intra-area, inter-area, type 1 external or type 2 external), cost, and will have the same associated area. However, each route specifies a separate next hop and advertising router. There is no requirement that a router running OSPF keep track of all possible equal-cost routes to a destination. An implementa- tion may choose to keep only a fixed number of routes to any given destination. This does not affect any of the algorithms presented in this specification. 16.9. Building the non-zero-TOS portion of the routing table The OSPF protocol can calculate a different set of routes for each IP TOS (see Section 2.4). Support for TOS-based routing is [Moy] [Page 154] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 optional. TOS-capable and non-TOS-capable routers can be mixed in an OSPF routing domain. Routers not supporting TOS calculate only the TOS 0 route to each destination. These routes are then used to forward all data traffic, regardless of the TOS indica- tions in the data packet's IP header. A router that does not support TOS indicates this fact to the other OSPF routers by clearing the T-bit in the Options field of its router links advertisement. The above sections detailing the routing table calculations han- dle the TOS 0 case only. In general, for routers supporting TOS-based routing, each piece of the routing table calculation must be rerun separately for the non-zero TOS values. When cal- culating routes for TOS X, only TOS X metrics can be used. Any link state advertisement may specify a separate cost for each TOS (a cost for TOS 0 must always be specified). The encoding of TOS in OSPF link state advertisements is described in Section 12.3. An advertisement can specify that it is restricted to TOS 0 (i.e., non-zero TOS is not handled) by clearing the T-bit in the link state advertisement's Option field. Such advertisements are not used when calculating routes for non-zero TOS. For this reason, it is possible that a destination is unreachable for some non-zero TOS. In this case, the TOS 0 path is used when forwarding packets (see Section 11.1). The following lists the modifications needed when running the routing table calculation for a non-zero TOS value (called TOS X). In general, routers and advertisements that do not support TOS are omitted from the calculation. Calculating the shortest-path tree (Section 16.1). Routers that do not support TOS-based routing should be omitted from the shortest-path tree calculation. These routers are identified as those having the T-bit reset in the Options field of their router links advertisements. Such routers should never be added to the Dijktra algorithm's candidate list, nor should their router links advertisements be examined when adding the stub networks to the tree. In particular, if the T-bit is reset in the cal- culating router's own router links advertisement, it does not run the shortest-path tree calculation for non-zero TOS values. Calculating the inter-area routes (Section 16.2). Inter-area paths are the concatenation of a path to an area [Moy] [Page 155] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 border router with a summary link. When calculating TOS X routes, both path components must also specify TOS X. In other words, only TOS X paths to the area border router are examined, and the area border router must be advertising a TOS X route to the destination. Note that this means that summary link advertisements having the T-bit reset in their Options field are not considered. Examining transit areas' summary links (Section 16.3). This calculation again considers the concatenation of a path to an area border router with a summary link. As with inter-area routes, only TOS X paths to the area border router are examined, and the area border router must be advertising a TOS X route to the destination. Calculating AS external routes (Section 16.4). This calculation considers the concatenation of a path to a forwarding address with an AS external link. Only TOS X paths to the forwarding address are examined, and the AS boundary router must be advertising a TOS X route to the destination. Note that this means that AS external link advertisements having the T-bit reset in their Options field are not considered. In addition, the advertising AS boundary router must also be reachable for its advertisements to be considered (see Sec- tion 16.4). However, if the advertising router and the for- warding address are not one in the same, the advertising router need only be reachable via TOS 0. [Moy] [Page 156] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 Footnotes [1]The graph's vertices represent either routers, transit networks, or stub networks. Since routers may belong to multiple areas, it is not possible to color the graph's vertices. [2]It is possible for all of a router's interfaces to be unnumbered point-to-point links. In this case, an IP address must be assigned to the router. This address will then be advertised in the router's router links advertisement as a host route. [3]Note that in these cases both interfaces, the non-virtual and the virtual, would have the same IP address. [4]Note that no host route is generated for, and no IP packets can be addressed to, interfaces to unnumbered point-to-point networks. This is regardless of such an interface's state. [5]It is instructive to see what happens when the Designated Router for the network crashes. Call the Designated Router for the network RT1, and the the Backup Designated Router RT2. If router RT1 crashes (or maybe its interface to the network dies), the other routers on the network will detect RT1's absence within Router- DeadInterval seconds. All routers may not detect this at precisely the same time; the routers that detect RT1's absence before RT2 does will, for a time, select RT2 to be both Designated Router and Backup Designated Router. When RT2 detects that RT1 is gone it will move itself to Designated Router. At this time, the remaining router having highest Router Priority will be selected as Backup Designated Router. [6]On point-to-point networks, the lower level protocols indicate whether the neighbor is up and running. Likewise, existence of the neighbor on virtual links is indicated by the routing table calcula- tion. However, in both these cases, the Hello Protocol is still used. This ensures that communication between the neighbors is bidirectional, and that each of the neighbors has a functioning routing protocol layer. [7]When the identity of the Designated Router is changing, it may be quite common for a neighbor in this state to send the router a Data- base Description packet; this means that there is some momentary disagreement on the Designated Router's identity. [8]Note that it is possible for a router to resynchronize any of its fully established adjacencies by setting the adjacency's state back to ExStart. This will cause the other end of the adjacency to [Moy] [Page 157] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 process a Seq Number Mismatch event, and therefore to also go back to ExStart state. [9]The address space of IP networks and the address space of OSPF Router IDs may overlap. That is, a network may have an IP address which is identical (when considered as a 32-bit number) to some router's Router ID. [10]It is assumed that, for two different address ranges matching the destination, one range is more specific than the other. Non- contiguous subnet masks can be configured to violate this assump- tion. Such subnet mask configurations cannot be handled by the OSPF protocol. [11]MaxAgeDiff is an architectural constant. It indicates the max- imum dispersion of ages, in seconds, that can occur for a single link state instance as it is flooded throughout the routing domain. If two advertisements differ by more than this, they are assumed to be different instances of the same advertisement. This can occur when a router restarts and loses track of its previous sequence number. See Section 13.4 for more details. [12]When two advertisements have different checksums, they are assumed to be separate instances. This can occur when a router res- tarts, and loses track of its previous sequence number. In this case, since the two advertisements have the same sequence number, it is not possible to determine which link state is actually newer. If the wrong advertisement is accepted as newer, the originating router will originate another instance. See Section 13.4 for further details. [13]There is one instance where a lookup must be done based on par- tial information. This is during the routing table calculation, when a network links advertisement must be found based solely on its Link State ID. The lookup in this case is still well defined, since no two network advertisements can have the same Link State ID. [14]This clause covers the case: Inter-area routes are not summar- ized to the backbone. This is because inter-area routes are always associated with the backbone area. [15]This clause is only invoked when Area A is a transit area sup- porting one or more virtual links. For example, in the area confi- guration of Figure 6, Router RT11 need only originate a single sum- mary link having the (collapsed) destination N9-N11,H1 into its con- nected transit area Area 2, since all of its other eligible routes have next hops belonging to Area 2 (and as such only need be adver- tised by other area border routers; in this case, Routers RT10 and [Moy] [Page 158] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 RT7). [16]By keeping more information in the routing table, it is possible for an implementation to recalculate the shortest path tree only for a single area. In fact, there are incremental algorithms that allow an implementation to recalculate only a portion of the shortest path tree [BBN]. These algorithms are beyond the scope of this specifi- cation. [17]This is how the Link state request list is emptied, which even- tually causes the neighbor state to transition to Full. See Section 10.9 for more details. [18]It should be a relatively rare occurrence for an advertisement's age to reach MaxAge. Usually, the advertisement will be replaced by a more recent instance before it ages out. [19]Only the TOS 0 routes are important here. This is because all routing protocol packets are sent with TOS= 0. See Appendix A. [20]It may be the case that paths to certain destinations do not vary based on TOS. For these destinations, the routing calculation need not be repeated for each TOS value. In addition, there need only be a single routing table entry for these destinations (instead of a separate entry for each TOS value). [21]Strictly speaking, because of equal-cost multipath, the algo- rithm does not create a tree. We continue to use the "tree" termi- nology because that is what occurs most often in the existing literature. [22]This means that before data traffic will flow between a pair of neighboring routers, their link state databases must be synchron- ized. Before synchronization (neighbor state < Full), a router will not include the connection to its neighbor in its link state adver- tisements. [23]As a result of this clause, when a virtual link exists between the calculating router and an AS boundary router, the intra-area path through the virtual link's transit area is always preferred over the virtual link itself. [24]When the forwarding address is non-zero, it should point to a router belonging to another Autonomous System. See Section 12.4.5 for more details. [Moy] [Page 159] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 References [BBN] McQuillan, J.M., Richer, I. and Rosen, E.C. ARPANET Routing Algorithm Improvements. BBN Technical Report 3803, April 1978. [DEC] Digital Equipment Corporation. Information process- ing systems -- Data communications -- Intermediate System to Intermediate System Intra-Domain Routing Protocol. October 1987. [McQuillan] McQuillan, J. et.al. The New Routing Algorithm for the Arpanet. IEEE Transactions on Communications, May 1980. [Perlman] Perlman, Radia. Fault-Tolerant Broadcast of Routing Information. Computer Networks, Dec. 1983. [RFC 791] Postel, Jon. Internet Protocol. September 1981 [RFC 905] ISO Transport Protocol Specification, ISO DP 8073. April 1984. [RFC 1112] Deering, S.E. Host extensions for IP multicasting. May 1988. [RFC 1213] McCloghrie, K., Rose, M.T. (editors) Management Information Base for network management of TCP/IP- based internets: MIB-II. March 1991. [RFC 1247] Moy, J. OSPF Version 2. July 1991. [RFC 1338] Fuller, V.; Li, T.; Yu, J.Y.; Varadhan, K. Super- netting: An address assignment and aggregation stra- tegy. June 1992. [RFC 1340] Reynolds, J. and Postel, J. Assigned Numbers. July 1992. [RFC 1349] Almquist, P. Type of Service in the Internet Proto- col Suite. July 1992. [RS-85-153] Leiner, Dr. Barry M., et.al. The DARPA Internet Protocol Suite. DDN Protocol Handbook, April 1985. [MOSPF] Moy, J. Multicast Extensions to OSPF. TBD. [Moy] [Page 160] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 [OSPF MIB] Baker, F. and Coltun, R. OSPF Version 2 Management Information Base. TBD. [OSPF Traps] Baker F. and Coltun, R. OSPF Version 2 Traps. TBD. [Moy] [Page 161] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 A. OSPF data formats This appendix describes the format of OSPF protocol packets and OSPF link state advertisements. The OSPF protocol runs directly over the IP network layer. Before any data formats are described, the details of the OSPF encapsulation are explained. Next the OSPF options field is described. This field describes various capabilities that may or may not be supported by pieces of the OSPF routing domain. The OSPF options field is contained in OSPF Hello packets, Database Description packets and in OSPF link state advertisements. OSPF packet formats are detailed in Section A.3. A description of OSPF link state advertisements appears in Section A.4. A.1 Encapsulation of OSPF packets OSPF runs directly over the Internet Protocol's network layer. OSPF packets are therefore encapsulated solely by IP and local network headers. OSPF does not define a way to fragment its protocol packets, and depends on IP fragmentation when transmitting packets larger than the network MTU. The OSPF packet types that are likely to be large (Database Description Packets, Link State Request, Link State Update, and Link State Acknowledgment packets) can usually be split into several separate protocol packets, without loss of functional- ity. This is recommended; IP fragmentation should be avoided when- ever possible. Using this reasoning, an attempt should be made to limit the sizes of packets sent over virtual links to 576 bytes. However, if necessary, the length of OSPF packets can be up to 65,535 bytes (including the IP header). The other important features of OSPF's IP encapsulation are: o Use of IP multicast. Some OSPF messages are multicast, when sent over multi-access networks. Two distinct IP multicast addresses are used. Packets destined to these multicast addresses should never be forwarded. Such packets are meant to travel a single hop only. To ensure that these packets will not travel multiple hops, their IP TTL must be set to 1. AllSPFRouters This multicast address has been assigned the value 224.0.0.5. All routers running OSPF should be prepared to receive packets sent to this address. Hello packets are always sent to this destination. Also, certain protocol [Moy] [Page 162] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 packets are sent to this address during the flooding pro- cedure. AllDRouters This multicast address has been assigned the value 224.0.0.6. Both the Designated Router and Backup Designated Router must be prepared to receive packets destined to this address. Certain packets are sent to this address during the flooding procedure. o OSPF is IP protocol number 89. This number has been registered with the Network Information Center. IP protocol number assign- ments are documented in [RFC 1340]. o Routing protocol packets are sent with IP TOS of 0. The OSPF protocol supports TOS-based routing. Routes to any particular destination may vary based on TOS. However, all OSPF routing protocol packets are sent using the normal service TOS value of binary 0000 defined in [RFC 1349]. o Routing protocol packets are sent with IP precedence set to Internetwork Control. OSPF protocol packets should be given precedence over regular IP data traffic, in both sending and receiving. Setting the IP precedence field in the IP header to Internetwork Control [RFC 791] may help implement this objec- tive. [Moy] [Page 163] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 A.2 The options field The OSPF options field is present in OSPF Hello packets, Database Description packets and all link state advertisements. The options field enables OSPF routers to support (or not support) optional capabilities, and to communicate their capability level to other OSPF routers. Through this mechanism routers of differing capabili- ties can be mixed within an OSPF routing domain. When used in Hello packets, the options field allows a router to reject a neighbor because of a capability mismatch. Alternatively, when capabilities are exchanged in Database Description packets a router can choose not to forward certain LSA types to a neighbor because of its reduced functionality. Lastly, listing capabilities in LSAs allows routers to route traffic around reduced functionality routers, by excluding them from parts of the routing table calcula- tion. Two capabilities are currently defined. For each capability, the effect of the capability's appearance (or lack of appearance) in Hello packets, Database Description packets and link state adver- tisements is specified below. For example, the external routing capability (below called the E-bit) has meaning only in OSPF Hello Packets. Routers should reset (i.e. clear) the unassigned part of the capability field when sending Hello packets or Database Descrip- tion packets and when originating link state advertisements. Additional capabilities may be assigned in the future. Routers encountering unrecognized capabilities in received Hello Packets, Database Description packets or link state advertisements should ignore the capability and process the packet/advertisement normally. +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | | | | | | |E|T| +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ The options field T-bit This describes the router's TOS capability. If the T-bit is reset, then the router supports only a single TOS (TOS 0). Such a router is also said to be incapable of TOS-routing. The absence of the T-bit in a router links advertisement causes the router to be skipped when building a non-zero TOS shortest-path tree (see Section 16.9). In other words, routers incapable of TOS routing will be avoided as much as possible when forwarding data traffic requesting a non-zero TOS. The absence of the T- [Moy] [Page 164] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 bit in a summary link advertisement or an AS external link advertisement indicates that the advertisement is describing a TOS 0 route only (and not routes for non-zero TOS). E-bit AS external link advertisements are not flooded into/through OSPF stub areas (see Section 3.6). The E-bit ensures that all members of a stub area agree on that area's configuration. The E-bit is meaningful only in OSPF Hello packets. When the E-bit is reset in the Hello packet sent out a particular interface, it means that the router will neither send nor receive AS external link state advertisements on that interface (in other words, the interface connects to a stub area). Two routers will not become neighbors unless they agree on the state of the E-bit. [Moy] [Page 165] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 A.3 OSPF Packet Formats There are five distinct OSPF packet types. All OSPF packet types begin with a standard 24 byte header. This header is described first. Each packet type is then described in a succeeding section. In these sections each packet's division into fields is displayed, and then the field definitions are enumerated. All OSPF packet types (other than the OSPF Hello packets) deal with lists of link state advertisements. For example, Link State Update packets implement the flooding of advertisements throughout the OSPF routing domain. Because of this, OSPF protocol packets cannot be parsed unless the format of link state advertisements is also under- stood. The format of Link state advertisements is described in Sec- tion A.4. The receive processing of OSPF packets is detailed in Section 8.2. The sending of OSPF packets is explained in Section 8.1. [Moy] [Page 166] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 A.3.1 The OSPF packet header Every OSPF packet starts with a common 24 byte header. This header contains all the necessary information to determine whether the packet should be accepted for further processing. This determina- tion is described in Section 8.2 of the specification. 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Version # | Type | Packet length | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Router ID | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Area ID | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Checksum | Autype | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Authentication | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Authentication | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ Version # The OSPF version number. This specification documents version 2 of the protocol. Type The OSPF packet types are as follows. The format of each of these packet types is described in a succeeding section. Type Description ________________________________ 1 Hello 2 Database Description 3 Link State Request 4 Link State Update 5 Link State Acknowledgment [Moy] [Page 167] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 Packet length The length of the protocol packet in bytes. This length includes the standard OSPF header. Router ID The Router ID of the packet's source. In OSPF, the source and destination of a routing protocol packet are the two ends of an (potential) adjacency. Area ID A 32 bit number identifying the area that this packet belongs to. All OSPF packets are associated with a single area. Most travel a single hop only. Packets travelling over a virtual link are labelled with the backbone area ID of 0. Checksum The standard IP checksum of the entire contents of the packet, excluding the 64-bit authentication field. This checksum is calculated as the 16-bit one's complement of the one's comple- ment sum of all the 16-bit words in the packet, excepting the authentication field. If the packet's length is not an integral number of 16-bit words, the packet is padded with a byte of zero before checksumming. AuType Identifies the authentication scheme to be used for the packet. Authentication is discussed in Appendix D of the specification. Consult Appendix D for a list of the currently defined authenti- cation types. Authentication A 64-bit field for use by the authentication scheme. [Moy] [Page 168] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 A.3.2 The Hello packet Hello packets are OSPF packet type 1. These packets are sent periodically on all interfaces (including virtual links) in order to establish and maintain neighbor relationships. In addition, Hellos are multicast on those physical networks having a multicast or broadcast capability, enabling dynamic discovery of neighboring routers. All routers connected to a common network must agree on certain parameters (network mask, hello and dead intervals). These parame- ters are included in Hello packets, so that differences can inhibit the forming of neighbor relationships. A detailed explanation of the receive processing for Hello packets is presented in Section 10.5. The sending of Hello packets is covered in Section 9.5. 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Version # | 1 | Packet length | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Router ID | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Area ID | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Checksum | Autype | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Authentication | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Authentication | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Network Mask | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | HelloInt | Options | Rtr Pri | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | DeadInt | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Designated Router | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Backup Designated Router | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Neighbor | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | ... | [Moy] [Page 169] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 Network mask The network mask associated with this interface. For example, if the interface is to a class B network whose third byte is used for subnetting, the network mask is 0xffffff00. Options The optional capabilities supported by the router, as documented in Section A.2. HelloInt The number of seconds between this router's Hello packets. Rtr Pri This router's Router Priority. Used in (Backup) Designated Router election. If set to 0, the router will be ineligible to become (Backup) Designated Router. Deadint The number of seconds before declaring a silent router down. Designated Router The identity of the Designated Router for this network, in the view of the advertising router. The Designated Router is iden- tified here by its IP interface address on the network. Set to 0 if there is no Designated Router. Backup Designated Router The identity of the Backup Designated Router for this network, in the view of the advertising router. The Backup Designated Router is identified here by its IP interface address on the network. Set to 0 if there is no backup Designated Router. Neighbor The Router IDs of each router from whom valid Hello packets have been seen recently on the network. Recently means in the last DeadInt seconds. [Moy] [Page 170] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 A.3.3 The Database Description packet Database Description packets are OSPF packet type 2. These packets are exchanged when an adjacency is being initialized. They describe the contents of the topological database. Multiple packets may be used to describe the database. For this purpose a poll-response procedure is used. One of the routers is designated to be master, the other a slave. The master sends Database Description packets (polls) which are acknowledged by Database Description packets sent by the slave (responses). The responses are linked to the polls via the packets' sequence numbers. The format of the Database Description packet is very similar to both the Link State Request and Link State Acknowledgment packets. The main part of all three is a list of items, each item describing a piece of the topological database. The sending of Database Description Packets is documented in Section 10.8. The reception of Database Description packets is documented in Section 10.6. 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Version # | 2 | Packet length | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Router ID | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Area ID | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Checksum | Autype | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Authentication | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Authentication | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | 0 | 0 | Options |0|0|0|0|0|I|M|MS +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | DD sequence number | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | | +- -+ | A | +- Link State Advertisement -+ | Header | +- -+ | | +- -+ | | [Moy] [Page 171] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | ... | 0 These fields are reserved. They must be 0. Options The optional capabilities supported by the router, as documented in Section A.2. I-bit The Init bit. When set to 1, this packet is the first in the sequence of database descriptions. M-bit The More bit. When set to 1, it indicates that more database descriptions are to follow. MS-bit The Master/Slave bit. When set to 1, it indicates that the router is the master during the database exchange process. Oth- erwise, the router is the slave. DD sequence number Used to sequence the collection of database description packets. The initial value (indicated by the Init bit being set) should be unique. The sequence number then increments until the com- plete database description has been sent. The rest of the packet consists of a (possibly partial) list of the topological database's pieces. Each link state advertisement in the database is described by its link state header. The link state header is documented in Section A.4.1. It contains all the informa- tion required to uniquely identify both the advertisement and the advertisement's current instance. [Moy] [Page 172] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 A.3.4 The Link State Request packet Link State Request packets are OSPF packet type 3. After exchanging Database Description packets with a neighboring router, a router may find that parts of its topological database are out of date. The Link State Request packet is used to request the pieces of the neighbor's database that are more up to date. Multiple Link State Request packets may need to be used. The sending of Link State Request packets is the last step in bringing up an adjacency. A router that sends a Link State Request packet has in mind the pre- cise instance of the database pieces it is requesting (defined by LS sequence number, LS checksum, and LS age). It may receive even more recent instances in response. The sending of Link State Request packets is documented in Section 10.9. The reception of Link State Request packets is documented in Section 10.7. 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Version # | 3 | Packet length | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Router ID | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Area ID | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Checksum | Autype | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Authentication | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Authentication | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | LS type | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Link State ID | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Advertising Router | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | ... | Each advertisement requested is specified by its LS type, Link State ID, and Advertising Router. This uniquely identifies the advertise- ment, but not its instance. Link State Request packets are under- stood to be requests for the most recent instance (whatever that [Moy] [Page 173] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 might be). [Moy] [Page 174] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 A.3.5 The Link State Update packet Link State Update packets are OSPF packet type 4. These packets implement the flooding of link state advertisements. Each Link State Update packet carries a collection of link state advertise- ments one hop further from its origin. Several link state adver- tisements may be included in a single packet. Link State Update packets are multicast on those physical networks that support multicast/broadcast. In order to make the flooding procedure reliable, flooded advertisements are acknowledged in Link State Acknowledgment packets. If retransmission of certain adver- tisements is necessary, the retransmitted advertisements are always carried by unicast Link State Update packets. For more information on the reliable flooding of link state advertisements, consult Sec- tion 13. 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Version # | 4 | Packet length | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Router ID | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Area ID | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Checksum | Autype | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Authentication | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Authentication | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | # advertisements | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | | +- +-+ | Link state advertisements | +- +-+ | ... | # advertisements The number of link state advertisements included in this update. [Moy] [Page 175] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 The body of the Link State Update packet consists of a list of link state advertisements. Each advertisement begins with a common 20 byte header, the link state advertisement header. This header is described in Section A.4.1. Otherwise, the format of each of the five types of link state advertisements is different. Their formats are described in Section A.4. [Moy] [Page 176] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 A.3.6 The Link State Acknowledgment packet Link State Acknowledgment Packets are OSPF packet type 5. To make the flooding of link state advertisements reliable, flooded adver- tisements are explicitly acknowledged. This acknowledgment is accomplished through the sending and receiving of Link State Ack- nowledgment packets. Multiple link state advertisements can be ack- nowledged in a single packet. Depending on the state of the sending interface and the source of the advertisements being acknowledged, a Link State Acknowledgment packet is sent either to the multicast address AllSPFRouters, to the multicast address AllDRouters, or as a unicast. The sending of Link State Acknowledgement packets is documented in Section 13.5. The reception of Link State Acknowledgement packets is documented in Section 13.7. The format of this packet is similar to that of the Data Description packet. The body of both packets is simply a list of link state advertisement headers. 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Version # | 5 | Packet length | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Router ID | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Area ID | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Checksum | Autype | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Authentication | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Authentication | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | | +- -+ | A | +- Link State Advertisement -+ | Header | +- -+ | | +- -+ | | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | ... | [Moy] [Page 177] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 Each acknowledged link state advertisement is described by its link state header. The link state header is documented in Section A.4.1. It contains all the information required to uniquely identify both the advertisement and the advertisement's current instance. [Moy] [Page 178] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 A.4 Link state advertisement formats There are five distinct types of link state advertisements. Each link state advertisement begins with a standard 20-byte link state header. This header is explained in Section A.4.1. Succeeding sec- tions then diagram the separate link state advertisement types. Each link state advertisement describes a piece of the OSPF routing domain. Every router originates a router links advertisement. In addition, whenever the router is elected Designated Router, it ori- ginates a network links advertisement. Other types of link state advertisements may also be originated (see Section 12.4). All link state advertisements are then flooded throughout the OSPF routing domain. The flooding algorithm is reliable, ensuring that all routers have the same collection of link state advertisements. (See Section 13 for more information concerning the flooding algorithm). This collection of advertisements is called the link state (or topo- logical) database. From the link state database, each router constructs a shortest path tree with itself as root. This yields a routing table (see Section 11). For the details of the routing table build process, see Sec- tion 16. [Moy] [Page 179] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 A.4.1 The Link State Advertisement header All link state advertisements begin with a common 20 byte header. This header contains enough information to uniquely identify the advertisement (LS type, Link State ID, and Advertising Router). Multiple instances of the link state advertisement may exist in the routing domain at the same time. It is then necessary to determine which instance is more recent. This is accomplished by examining the LS age, LS sequence number and LS checksum fields that are also contained in the link state advertisement header. 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | LS age | Options | LS type | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Link State ID | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Advertising Router | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | LS sequence number | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | LS checksum | length | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ LS age The time in seconds since the link state advertisement was ori- ginated. Options The optional capabilities supported by the described portion of the routing domain. OSPF's optional capabilities are documented in Section A.2. LS type The type of the link state advertisement. Each link state type has a separate advertisement format. The link state types are as follows (see Section 12.1.3 for further explanation): [Moy] [Page 180] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 LS Type Description ___________________________________ 1 Router links 2 Network links 3 Summary link (IP network) 4 Summary link (ASBR) 5 AS external link Link State ID This field identifies the portion of the internet environment that is being described by the advertisement. The contents of this field depend on the advertisement's LS type. For example, in network links advertisements the Link State ID is set to the IP interface address of the network's Designated Router (from which the network's IP address can be derived). The Link State ID is further discussed in Section 12.1.4. Advertising Router The Router ID of the router that originated the link state advertisement. For example, in network links advertisements this field is set to the Router ID of the network's Designated Router. LS sequence number Detects old or duplicate link state advertisements. Successive instances of a link state advertisement are given successive LS sequence numbers. See Section 12.1.6 for more details. LS checksum The Fletcher checksum of the complete contents of the link state advertisement. See Section 12.1.7 for more details. length The length in bytes of the link state advertisement. This includes the 20 byte link state header. [Moy] [Page 181] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 A.4.2 Router links advertisements Router links advertisements are the Type 1 link state advertise- ments. Each router in an area originates a router links advertise- ment. The advertisement describes the state and cost of the router's links (or interfaces) to the area. All of the router's links to the area must be described in a single router links adver- tisement. For details concerning the construction of router links advertisements, see Section 12.4.1. In router links advertisements, the Link State ID field is set to the router's OSPF Router ID. The T-bit is set in the advertisement's Option field if and only if the router is able to calculate a separate set of routes for each IP TOS. Router links advertisements are flooded throughout a single area only. 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | LS age | Options | 1 | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Link State ID | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Advertising Router | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | LS sequence number | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | LS checksum | length | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | 0 |V|E|B| 0 | # links | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Link ID | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Link Data | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Type | # TOS | TOS 0 metric | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | TOS | 0 | metric | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | ... | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | TOS | 0 | metric | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Link ID | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Link Data | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ [Moy] [Page 182] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 | ... | bit V When set, the router is an endpoint of an active virtual link that is using the described area as a transit area. bit E When set, the router is an AS boundary router (E is for exter- nal) bit B When set, the router is an area border router (B is for border) # links The number of router links described by this advertisement. This must be the total collection of router links to the area. The following fields are used to describe each router link. Each router link is typed (see the below Type field). The type field indicates the kind of link being described. It may be a link to a transit network, to another router or to a stub network. The values of all the other fields describing a router link depend on the link's type. For example, each link has an associated 32-bit data field. For links to stub networks this field specifies the network's IP address mask. For the other link types the Link Data specifies the router's associated IP interface address. Type A quick description of the router link. One of the following. Note that host routes are classified as links to stub networks whose network mask is 0xffffffff. Type Description __________________________________________________ 1 Point-to-point connection to another router 2 Connection to a transit network 3 Connection to a stub network 4 Virtual link [Moy] [Page 183] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 Link ID Identifies the object that this router link connects to. Value depends on the link's type. When connecting to an object that also originates a link state advertisement (i.e., another router or a transit network) the Link ID is equal to the other advertisement's Link State ID. This provides the key for look- ing up said advertisement in the link state database. See Sec- tion 12.2 for more details. Type Link ID ______________________________________ 1 Neighboring router's ID 2 IP address of Designated Router 3 IP network/subnet number 4 Neighboring router's ID Link Data Contents again depend on the link's Type field. For connections to stub network, it specifies the network mask. For unnumbered point-to-point networks, it specifies the interface's MIB-II [RFC 1213] ifIndex value. For the other link types it specifies the router's associated IP interface address. This latter piece of information is needed during the routing table build process, when calculating the IP address of the next hop. See Section 16.1.1 for more details. #metrics The number of different TOS metrics given for this link, not counting the required metric for TOS 0. For example, if no additional TOS metrics are given, this field should be set to 0. TOS 0 metric The cost of using this router link for TOS 0. For each link, separate metrics may be specified for each Type of Service (TOS). The metric for TOS 0 must always be included, and was discussed above. Metrics for non-zero TOS are described below. The encoding of TOS in OSPF link state advertisements is described in Section 12.3. Note that the cost for non-zero TOS values that are not specified defaults to the TOS 0 cost. Metrics must be listed in order of increasing TOS encoding. For example, the metric for TOS 16 must always follow the metric for TOS 8 when both are [Moy] [Page 184] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 specified. TOS IP type of service that this metric refers to. The encoding of TOS in OSPF link state advertisements is described in Section 12.3. metric The cost of using this outbound router link, for traffic of the specified TOS. [Moy] [Page 185] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 A.4.3 Network links advertisements Network links advertisements are the Type 2 link state advertise- ments. A network links advertisement is originated for each transit network in the area. A transit network is a multi-access network that has more than one attached router. The network links adver- tisement is originated by the network's Designated Router. The advertisement describes all routers attached to the network, includ- ing the Designated Router itself. The advertisement's Link State ID field lists the IP interface address of the Designated Router. The distance from the network to all attached routers is zero, for all types of service. This is why the TOS and metric fields need not be specified in the network links advertisement. For details concerning the construction of network links advertisements, see Section 12.4.2. 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | LS age | Options | 2 | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Link State ID | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Advertising Router | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | LS sequence number | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | LS checksum | length | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Network Mask | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Attached Router | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | ... | Network Mask The IP address mask for the network. For example, a class A network would have the mask 0xff000000. Attached Router The Router IDs of each of the routers attached to the network. Actually, only those routers that are fully adjacent to the Designated Router are listed. The Designated Router includes itself in this list. The number of routers included can be [Moy] [Page 186] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 deduced from the link state advertisement's length field. [Moy] [Page 187] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 A.4.4 Summary link advertisements Summary link advertisements are the Type 3 and 4 link state adver- tisements. These advertisements are originated by area border routers. A separate summary link advertisement is made for each destination (known to the router) which belongs to the AS, yet is outside the area. For details concerning the construction of sum- mary link advertisements, see Section 12.4.3. Type 3 link state advertisements are used when the destination is an IP network. In this case the advertisement's Link State ID field is an IP network number (if necessary, the Link State ID can also have one or more of the network's "host" bits set; see Appendix F for details). When the destination is an AS boundary router, a Type 4 advertisement is used, and the Link State ID field is the AS boun- dary router's OSPF Router ID. (To see why it is necessary to adver- tise the location of each ASBR, consult Section 16.4.) Other than the difference in the Link State ID field, the format of Type 3 and 4 link state advertisements is identical. For stub areas, type 3 summary link advertisements can also be used to describe a (per-area) default route. Default summary routes are used in stub areas instead of flooding a complete set of external routes. When describing a default summary route, the advertisement's Link State ID is always set to DefaultDestination (0.0.0.0) and the Network Mask is set to 0.0.0.0. Separate costs may be advertised for each IP Type of Service. The encoding of TOS in OSPF link state advertisements is described in Section 12.3. Note that the cost for TOS 0 must be included, and is always listed first. If the T-bit is reset in the advertisement's Option field, only a route for TOS 0 is described by the advertise- ment. Otherwise, routes for the other TOS values are also described; if a cost for a certain TOS is not included, its cost defaults to that specified for TOS 0. 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | LS age | Options | 3 or 4 | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Link State ID | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Advertising Router | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | LS sequence number | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ [Moy] [Page 188] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 | LS checksum | length | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Network Mask | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | TOS | metric | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | ... | Network Mask For Type 3 link state advertisements, this indicates the destination's IP network mask. For example, when advertising the location of a class A network the value 0xff000000 would be used. This field is not meaningful and must be zero for Type 4 link state advertisements. For each specified type of service, the following fields are defined. The number of TOS routes included can be calculated from the link state advertisement's length field. Values for TOS 0 must be specified; they are listed first. Other values must be listed in order of increasing TOS encoding. For example, the cost for TOS 16 must always follow the cost for TOS 8 when both are specified. TOS The Type of Service that the following cost concerns. The encoding of TOS in OSPF link state advertisements is described in Section 12.3. metric The cost of this route. Expressed in the same units as the interface costs in the router links advertisements. [Moy] [Page 189] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 A.4.5 AS external link advertisements AS external link advertisements are the Type 5 link state advertise- ments. These advertisements are originated by AS boundary routers. A separate advertisement is made for each destination (known to the router) which is external to the AS. For details concerning the construction of AS external link advertisements, see Section 12.4.3. AS external link advertisements usually describe a particular exter- nal destination. For these advertisements the Link State ID field specifies an IP network number (if necessary, the Link State ID can also have one or more of the network's "host" bits set; see Appendix F for details). AS external link advertisements are also used to describe a default route. Default routes are used when no specific route exists to the destination. When describing a default route, the Link State ID is always set to DefaultDestination (0.0.0.0) and the Network Mask is set to 0.0.0.0. Separate costs may be advertised for each IP Type of Service. The encoding of TOS in OSPF link state advertisements is described in Section 12.3. Note that the cost for TOS 0 must be included, and is always listed first. If the T-bit is reset in the advertisement's Option field, only a route for TOS 0 is described by the advertise- ment. Otherwise, routes for the other TOS values are also described; if a cost for a certain TOS is not included, its cost defaults to that specified for TOS 0. 0 1 2 3 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | LS age | Options | 5 | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Link State ID | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Advertising Router | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | LS sequence number | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | LS checksum | length | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Network Mask | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ |E| TOS | metric | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | Forwarding address | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | External Route Tag | [Moy] [Page 190] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | ... | Network Mask The IP network mask for the advertised destination. For exam- ple, when advertising a class A network the mask 0xff000000 would be used. For each specified type of service, the following fields are defined. The number of TOS routes included can be calculated from the link state advertisement's length field. Values for TOS 0 must be specified; they are listed first. Other values must be listed in order of increasing TOS encoding. For example, the cost for TOS 16 must always follow the cost for TOS 8 when both are specified. bit E The type of external metric. If bit E is set, the metric speci- fied is a Type 2 external metric. This means the metric is con- sidered larger than any link state path. If bit E is zero, the specified metric is a Type 1 external metric. This means that is is comparable directly (without translation) to the link state metric. Forwarding address Data traffic for the advertised destination will be forwarded to this address. If the Forwarding address is set to 0.0.0.0, data traffic will be forwarded instead to the advertisement's origi- nator (i.e., the responsible AS boundary router). TOS The Type of Service that the following cost concerns. The encoding of TOS in OSPF link state advertisements is described in Section 12.3. metric The cost of this route. Interpretation depends on the external type indication (bit E above). External Route Tag A 32-bit field attached to each external route. This is not used by the OSPF protocol itself. It may be used to communicate information between AS boundary routers; the precise nature of such information is outside the scope of this specification. [Moy] [Page 191] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 B. Architectural Constants Several OSPF protocol parameters have fixed architectural values. These parameters have been referred to in the text by names such as LSRefreshTimer. The same naming convention is used for the confi- gurable protocol parameters. They are defined in appendix C. The name of each architectural constant follows, together with its value and a short description of its function. LSRefreshTime The maximum time between distinct originations of any particular link state advertisement. For each link state advertisement that a router originates, an interval timer should be set to this value. Firing of this timer causes a new instance of the link state advertisement to be originated. The value of LSRefreshTime is set to 30 minutes. MinLSInterval The minimum time between distinct originations of any particular link state advertisement. The value of MinLSInterval is set to 5 seconds. MaxAge The maximum age that a link state advertisement can attain. When an advertisement's age reaches MaxAge, it is reflooded. It is then removed from the database as soon as this flood is ack- nowledged, i.e., as soon as it has been removed from all neigh- bor Link state retransmission lists. Advertisements having age MaxAge are not used in the routing table calculation. The value of MaxAge must be greater than LSRefreshTime. The value of Max- Age is set to 1 hour. CheckAge When the age of a link state advertisement (that is contained in the link state database) hits a multiple of CheckAge, the advertisement's checksum is verified. An incorrect checksum at this time indicates a serious error. The value of CheckAge is set to 5 minutes. MaxAgeDiff The maximum time dispersion that can occur, as a link state advertisement is flooded throughout the AS. Most of this time is accounted for by the link state advertisements sitting on router output queues (and therefore not aging) during the flood- ing process. The value of MaxAgeDiff is set to 15 minutes. [Moy] [Page 192] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 LSInfinity The metric value indicating that the destination described by a link state advertisement is unreachable. Used in summary link advertisements and AS external link advertisements as an alter- native to premature aging (see Section 14.1). It is defined to be the 24-bit binary value of all ones: 0xffffff. DefaultDestination The Destination ID that indicates the default route. This route is used when no other matching routing table entry can be found. The default destination can only be advertised in AS external link advertisements and in stub areas' type 3 summary link advertisements. Its value is the IP address 0.0.0.0. [Moy] [Page 193] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 C. Configurable Constants The OSPF protocol has quite a few configurable parameters. These parameters are listed below. They are grouped into general func- tional categories (area parameters, interface parameters, etc.). Sample values are given for some of the parameters. Some parameter settings need to be consistent among groups of routers. For example, all routers in an area must agree on that area's parameters, and all routers attached to a network must agree on that network's IP network number and mask. Some parameters may be determined by router algorithms outside of this specification (e.g., the address of a host connected to the router via a SLIP line). From OSPF's point of view, these items are still configurable. C.1 Global parameters In general, a separate copy of the OSPF protocol is run for each area. Because of this, most configuration parameters are defined on a per-area basis. The few global configuration parameters are listed below. Router ID This is a 32-bit number that uniquely identifies the router in the Autonomous System. One algorithm for Router ID assignment is to choose the largest or smallest IP address assigned to the router. If a router's OSPF Router ID is changed, the router's OSPF software should be restarted before the new Router ID takes effect. TOS capability This item indicates whether the router will calculate separate routes based on TOS. For more information, see Sections 4.5 and 16.9. C.2 Area parameters All routers belonging to an area must agree on that area's con- figuration. Disagreements between two routers will lead to an inability for adjacencies to form between them, with a resulting hindrance to the flow of routing protocol and data traffic. The following items must be configured for an area: [Moy] [Page 194] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 Area ID This is a 32-bit number that identifies the area. The Area ID of 0 is reserved for the backbone. If the area represents a subnetted network, the IP network number of the subnetted network may be used for the Area ID. List of address ranges An OSPF area is defined as a list of address ranges. Each address range consists of the following items: [IP address, mask] Describes the collection of IP addresses contained in the address range. Networks and hosts are assigned to an area depending on whether their addresses fall into one of the area's defining address ranges. Routers are viewed as belonging to multiple areas, depending on their attached net- works' area membership. [Status] Set to either Advertise or DoNotAdvertise. Routing information is condensed at area boundaries. Exter- nal to the area, at most a single route is adver- tised for each address range. The route is adver- tised if and only if the address range's Status is set to Advertise. Unadvertised ranges allow the existence of certain networks to be intentionally hidden from other areas. Status is set to Advertise by default. As an example, suppose an IP subnetted network is to be its own OSPF area. The area would be configured as a single address range, whose IP address is the address of the sub- netted network, and whose mask is the natural class A, B, or C internet mask. A single route would be advertised exter- nal to the area, describing the entire subnetted network. Authentication type Each area can be configured for a separate type of authenti- cation. See Appendix D for a discussion of the defined authentication types. External routing capability Whether AS external advertisements will be flooded into/throughout the area. If AS external advertisements are excluded from the area, the area is called a "stub". Inter- nal to stub areas, routing to external destinations will be based solely on a default summary route. The backbone [Moy] [Page 195] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 cannot be configured as a stub area. Also, virtual links cannot be configured through stub areas. For more informa- tion, see Section 3.6. StubDefaultCost If the area has been configured as a stub area, and the router itself is an area border router, then the StubDe- faultCost indicates the cost of the default summary link that the router should advertise into the area. There can be a separate cost configured for each IP TOS. See Section 12.4.3 for more information. C.3 Router interface parameters Some of the configurable router interface parameters (such as IP interface address and subnet mask) actually imply properties of the attached networks, and therefore must be consistent across all the routers attached to that network. The parameters that must be configured for a router interface are: IP interface address The IP protocol address for this interface. This uniquely identifies the router over the entire internet. An IP address is not required on serial lines. Such a serial line is called "unnumbered". IP interface mask This denotes the portion of the IP interface address that identifies the attached network. This is often referred to as the subnet mask. Interface output cost(s) The cost of sending a packet on the interface, expressed in the link state metric. This is advertised as the link cost for this interface in the router's router links advertise- ment. There may be a separate cost for each IP Type of Ser- vice. The interface output cost(s) must always be greater than 0. RxmtInterval The number of seconds between link state advertisement retransmissions, for adjacencies belonging to this inter- face. Also used when retransmitting Database Description and Link State Request Packets. This should be well over the expected round-trip delay between any two routers on the attached network. The setting of this value should be con- servative or needless retransmissions will result. It will [Moy] [Page 196] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 need to be larger on low speed serial lines and virtual links. Sample value for a local area network: 5 seconds. InfTransDelay The estimated number of seconds it takes to transmit a Link State Update Packet over this interface. Link state adver- tisements contained in the update packet must have their age incremented by this amount before transmission. This value should take into account the transmission and propagation delays for the interface. It must be greater than 0. Sam- ple value for a local area network: 1 second. Router Priority An 8-bit unsigned integer. When two routers attached to a network both attempt to become Designated Router, the one with the highest Router Priority takes precedence. If there is still a tie, the router with the highest Router ID takes precedence. A router whose Router Priority is set to 0 is ineligible to become Designated Router on the attached net- work. Router Priority is only configured for interfaces to multi-access networks. HelloInterval The length of time, in seconds, between the Hello packets that the router sends on the interface. This value is advertised in the router's Hello packets. It must be the same for all routers attached to a common network. The smaller the hello interval, the faster topological changes will be detected, but more routing traffic will ensue. Sam- ple value for a X.25 PDN network: 30 seconds. Sample value for a local area network: 10 seconds. RouterDeadInterval The number of seconds that a router's Hellos have not been seen before its neighbors declare the router down. This is also advertised in the router's Hello Packets in the DeadInt field. This should be some multiple of the HelloInterval (say 4). This value again must be the same for all routers attached to a common network. Authentication key This configured data allows the authentication procedure to generate and/or verify the authentication field in the OSPF header. This value again must be the same for all routers attached to a common network. For example, if the authenti- cation type indicates simple password, the authentication key would be a 64-bit password. This key would be inserted directly into the OSPF header when originating routing [Moy] [Page 197] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 protocol packets. There could be a separate password for each network. C.4 Virtual link parameters Virtual links are used to restore/increase connectivity of the backbone. Virtual links may be configured between any pair of area border routers having interfaces to a common (non-backbone) area. The virtual link appears as an unnumbered point-to-point link in the graph for the backbone. The virtual link must be configured in both of the area border routers. A virtual link appears in router links advertisements (for the backbone) as if it were a separate router interface to the back- bone. As such, it has all of the parameters associated with a router interface (see Section C.3). Although a virtual link acts like an unnumbered point-to-point link, it does have an associated IP interface address. This address is used as the IP source in protocol packets it sends along the virtual link, and is set dynamically during the routing table build process. Interface output cost is also set dynamically on virtual links to be the cost of the intra-area path between the two routers. The parameter RxmtInterval must be configured, and should be well over the expected round-trip delay between the two routers. This may be hard to estimate for a virtual link. It is better to err on the side of making it too large. Router Priority is not used on virtual links. A virtual link is defined by the following two configurable parameters: the Router ID of the virtual link's other endpoint, and the (non-backbone) area through which the virtual link runs (referred to as the virtual link's transit area). Virtual links cannot be configured through stub areas. C.5 Non-broadcast, multi-access network parameters OSPF treats a non-broadcast, multi-access network much like it treats a broadcast network. Since there may be many routers attached to the network, a Designated Router is selected for the network. This Designated Router then originates a networks links advertisement, which lists all routers attached to the non-broadcast network. However, due to the lack of broadcast capabilities, it is neces- sary to use configuration parameters in the Designated Router selection. These parameters need only be configured in those routers that are themselves eligible to become Designated Router (i.e., those router's whose DR Priority for the network is non- [Moy] [Page 198] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 zero): List of all other attached routers The list of all other routers attached to the non-broadcast network. Each router is listed by its IP interface address on the network. Also, for each router listed, that router's eligibility to become Designated Router must be defined. When an interface to a non-broadcast network comes up, the router sends Hello packets only to those neighbors eligible to become Designated Router, until the identity of the Designated Router is discovered. PollInterval If a neighboring router has become inactive (hellos have not been seen for RouterDeadInterval seconds), it may still be necessary to send Hellos to the dead neighbor. These Hellos will be sent at the reduced rate PollInterval, which should be much larger than HelloInterval. Sample value for a PDN X.25 network: 2 minutes. C.6 Host route parameters Host routes are advertised in router links advertisements as stub networks with mask 0xffffffff. They indicate either router interfaces to point-to-point networks, looped router interfaces, or IP hosts that are directly connected to the router (e.g., via a SLIP line). For each host directly connected to the router, the following items must be configured: Host IP address The IP address of the host. Cost of link to host The cost of sending a packet to the host, in terms of the link state metric. There may be multiple costs configured, one for each IP TOS. However, since the host probably has only a single connection to the internet, the actual config- ured cost(s) in many cases is unimportant (i.e., will have no effect on routing). [Moy] [Page 199] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 D. Authentication All OSPF protocol exchanges are authenticated. The OSPF packet header (see Section A.3.1) includes an authentication type field, and 64-bits of data for use by the appropriate authentication scheme (determined by the type field). The authentication type is configurable on a per-area basis. Addi- tional authentication data is configurable on a per-interface basis. For example, if an area uses a simple password scheme for authenti- cation, a separate password may be configured for each network con- tained in the area. Authentication types 0 and 1 are defined by this specification. All other authentication types are reserved for definition by the IANA (iana@ISI.EDU). The current list of authentication types is described below in Table 20. AuType Description ___________________________________________ 0 No authentication 1 Simple password All others Reserved for assignment by the IANA (iana@ISI.EDU) Table 20: OSPF authentication types. D.1 Autype 0 -- No authentication Use of this authentication type means that routing exchanges in the area are not authenticated. The 64-bit field in the OSPF header can contain anything; it is not examined on packet recep- tion. D.2 Autype 1 -- Simple password Using this authentication type, a 64-bit field is configured on a per-network basis. All packets sent on a particular network must have this configured value in their OSPF header 64-bit authentication field. This essentially serves as a "clear" 64- bit password. [Moy] [Page 200] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 This guards against routers inadvertently joining the area. They must first be configured with their attached networks' passwords before they can participate in the routing domain. [Moy] [Page 201] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 E. Differences from RFC 1247 This section documents the differences between this memo and RFC 1247. These differences include a fix for a problem involving OSPF virtual links, together with minor enhancements and clarifications to the protocol. All differences are backward-compatible. Implemen- tations of this memo and of RFC 1247 will interoperate. E.1 A fix for a problem with OSPF Virtual links In RFC 1247, certain configurations of OSPF virtual links can cause routing loops. The root of the problem is that while there is an information mismatch at the boundary of any virtual link's transit area, a backbone path can still cross the boundary. RFC 1247 attempted to compensate for this information mismatch by adjusting any backbone path as it enters the transit area (see Section 16.3 in RFC 1247). However, this proved not to be enough. This memo fixes the problem by having all area border routers determine, by looking at summary links, whether better backbone paths can be found through the transit areas. This fix simplifies the OSPF virtual link logic, and consists of the following components: o A new bit has been defined in the router links advertise- ment, called bit V. Bit V is set in a router's router links advertisement for Area A if and only if the router is an endpoint of an active virtual link that uses Area A as its transit area (see Sections 12.4.1 and A.4.2). This enables the other routers attached to Area A to discover whether the area supports any virtual links (i.e., is a transit area). This discovery is done during the calculation of Area A's shortest-path tree (see Section 16.1). o To aid in the description of the algorithm, a new parameter has been added to the OSPF area structure: Transit capabil- ity. This parameter indicates whether the area supports any active virtual links. Equivalently, it indicates whether the area can carry traffic that neither originates nor ter- minates in the area itself. o The calculation in Section 16.3 of RFC 1247 has been replaced. The new calculation, performed by area border routers only, examines the summary links belonging to all attached transit areas to see whether the transit areas can provide better paths than those already found in Sections 16.1 and 16.2. [Moy] [Page 202] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 o The incremental calculations in Section 16.5 have been updated as a result of the new calculations in Section 16.3. E.2 Supporting supernetting and subnet 0 In RFC 1247, an OSPF router cannot originate separate AS exter- nal link advertisements (or separate summary link advertise- ments) for two networks that have the same address but different masks. This situation can arise when subnet 0 of a network has been assigned (a practice that is generally discouraged), or when using supernetting as described in [RFC 1338] (a practice that is generally encouraged to reduce the size of routing tables), or even when in transition from one mask to another on a subnet. Using supernetting as an example, you might want to aggregate the four class C networks 192.9.4.0-192.9.7.0, advertising one route for the aggregation and another for the single class C network 192.9.4.0. The reason behind this limitation is that in RFC 1247, the Link State ID of AS external link advertisements and summary link advertisements is set equal to the described network's address. In the above example, RFC 1247 would assign both advertisements the Link State ID of 192.9.4.0, making them in essence the same advertisement. This memo fixes the problem by relaxing the set- ting of the Link State ID so that any of the "host" bits of the network address can also be set. This allows you to disambiguate advertisements for networks having the same address but dif- ferent masks. Given an AS external link advertisement (or a sum- mary link advertisement), the described network's address can now be obtained by masking the Link State ID with the network mask carried in the body of the advertisement. Again using the above example, the aggregate can now be advertised using a Link State ID of 192.9.4.0 and the single class C network advertised simultaneously using the Link State ID of 192.9.4.255. Appendix F gives one possible algorithm for setting one or more "host" bits in the Link State ID in order to disambiguate adver- tisements. It should be noted that this is a local decision. Each router in an OSPF system is free to use its own algorithm, since only those advertisements originated by the router itself are affected. It is believed that this change will be more or less compatible with implementations of RFC 1247. Implementations of RFC 1247 will probably either a) install routing table entries that won't be used or b) do the correct processing as outlined in this memo or c) mark the advertisement as unusable when presented with a Link State ID that has one or more of the host bits set. [Moy] [Page 203] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 However, in the interest of interoperability implementations of this memo should only set the host bits when absolutely neces- sary. The change affects Sections 12.1.4, 12.4.3, 12.4.5, 16.2, 16.3, 16.4, 16.5, 16.6, A.4.4 and A.4.5. E.3 Obsoleting LSInfinity in router-LSAs The metric of LSInfinity can no longer be used in router-LSAs to indicate unusable links. This is being done for several reasons: First, it removes any possible confusion in an OSPF area as to just which routers/networks are reachable in the area. For exam- ple, the above virtual link fix relies on detecting the existence of virtual links when running the Dijkstra. However, when one-directional links (i.e., cost of LSInfinity in one direction, but not the other) are possible, some routers may detect the existence of virtual links while others may not. This may defeat the fix for the virtual link problem. Second, it also helps the IP multicast extensions to OSPF (see [MOSPF]), because one-way reachability can lead to places that are reachable via unicast but not multicast, or vice versa. The two prior justifications for using LSInfinity in router-LSAs were 1) it was a way to not support TOS before TOS was optional and 2) it went along with strong TOS interpretations. These jus- tifications are no longer valid. However, LSInfinity will con- tinue to mean "unreachable" in summary-LSAs and AS-external- LSAs, as some implementations use this as an alternative to the premature aging procedure specified in Section 14.1. This change has one other side effect. When two routers are con- nected via a virtual link whose underlying path is non-TOS- capable, they must now revert to being non-TOS-capable routers themselves, instead of the previous behavior of advertising the non-zero TOS costs of the virtual link as LSInfinity. See Sec- tion 15 for details. E.4 TOS encoding updated The encoding of TOS in OSPF link state advertisements has been updated to reflect the new TOS value (minimize monetary cost) defined by [RFC 1349]. The OSPF encoding is defined in Section 12.3, which is identical in content to Section A.5 of [RFC 1349]. [Moy] [Page 204] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 E.5 Summarizing routes into transit areas RFC 1247 mandated that routes associated with Area A are never summarized back into Area A. However, this memo further reduces the number of summary links originated by refusing to summarize into Area A those routes having next hops belonging to Area A. This is an optimization over RFC 1247 behavior when virtual links are present. For example, in the area configuration of Figure 6, Router RT11 need only originate a single summary link having the (collapsed) destination N9-N11,H1 into its connected transit area Area 2, since all of its other eligible routes have next hops belonging to Area 2 (and as such only need be adver- tised by other area border routers; in this case, Routers RT10 and RT7). This is the logical equivalent of a Distance Vector protocol's split horizon logic. This change appears in Section 12.4.3. E.6 Summarizing routes into stub areas RFC 1247 mandated that area border routers attached to stub areas must summarize all inter-area routes into the stub areas. However, while area border routers connected to OSPF stub areas must import default summary links into the stub area, they need not summarize other routes into the stub area. The amount of summarization done into stub areas can instead be put under con- figuration control. The network administrator can then make a trade-off between optimal routing and database size. This change appears in Sections 12.4.3 and 12.4.4. E.7 Required Statistics appendix deleted Appendix D of RFC 1247, which specified a list of required statistics for an OSPF implementation, has been deleted. That appendix has been superseded by the documents: OSPF Version 2 Information Base [OSPF MIB] and OSPF Version 2 Traps [OSPF Traps]. E.8 Other changes The following small changes were also made to RFC 1247: o When representing unnumbered point-to-point networks in router links advertisements, the corresponding Link Data field should be set to the unnumbered interface's MIB-II [RFC 1213] ifIndex value. [Moy] [Page 205] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 o A comment was added to Step 3 of the Dijkstra algorithm in Section 16.1. When removing vertices from the candidate list, and when there is a choice of vertices closest to the root, network vertices must be chosen before router vertices in order to necessarily find all equal-cost paths. o A comment was added to Section 12.4.3 noting that a summary link advertisement cannot express a reachable destination whose path cost equals or exceeds LSInfinity. o A comment was added to Section 15 noting that a virtual link whose underlying path has cost greater than hexadecimal 0xffff (the maximum size of an interface cost in a router links advertisement) should be considered inoperational. o An option was added to the definition of area address ranges, allowing the network administrator to specify that a particular range should not be advertised to other OSPF areas. This enables the existence of certain networks to be hidden from other areas. This change appears in Sections 12.4.3 and C.2. o A note was added reminding implementors that bit E (the AS boundary router indication) should never be set in a router links advertisement for a stub area, since stub areas cannot contain AS boundary routers. This change appears in Section 12.4.1. [Moy] [Page 206] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 F. An algorithm for assigning Link State IDs In RFC 1247, the Link State ID in AS external link advertisements and summary link advertisements is set to the described network's IP address. This memo relaxes that requirement, allowing one or more of the network's host bits to be set in the Link State ID. This allows the router to originate separate advertisements for networks having the same addresses, yet different masks. Such networks can occur in the presence of supernetting and subnet 0s (see Section E.2 for more information). This appendix gives one possible algorithm for setting the host bits in Link State IDs. The choice of such an algorithm is a local deci- sion. Separate routers are free to use different algorithms, since the only advertisements affected are the ones that the router itself originates. The algorithm below is stated for AS external link advertisements. This is only for clarity; the exact same algorithm can be used for summary links. Suppose that the router wishes to originate an AS external link advertisement for a network having address NA and mask NM1. The following steps are then used to determine the advertisement's Link State ID: (1) Determine whether the router is already originating an AS exter- nal link advertisement with Link State ID equal to NA (the router itself of course will be listed as the advertisement's Advertising Router). If not, set the Link State ID equal to NA (the RFC 1247 behavior) and the algorithm terminates. Otherwise, (2) Obtain the network mask from the body of the already existing AS external link advertisement. Call this mask NM2. There are then two cases: o NM1 is longer (i.e., more specific) than NM2. In this case, set the Link State ID in the new advertisement to be the network [NA,NM1] with all the host bits set (i.e., equal to NA or'ed together with all the bits that are not set in NM1, which is network [NA,NM1]'s broadcast address). o NM2 is longer than NM1. In this case, change the existing advertisement (having Link State ID of NA) to reference the new network [NA,NM1] by incrementing the sequence number, changing the mask in the body to NM1 and using the cost for the new network. Then originate a new advertisement for the old network [NA,NM2], with Link State ID equal to NA or'ed together with the bits that are not set in NM2 (i.e., net- work [NA,NM2]'s broadcast address). [Moy] [Page 207] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 The above algorithm assumes that all masks are contiguous; this ensures that when two networks have the same address, one mask is more specific than the other. The algorithm also assumes the no net- work exists having an address equal to another network's broadcast address. Given these two assumptions, the above algorithm always produces unique Link State IDs. The above algorithm can also be reworded as follows: When original an AS external link state adver- tisement, try to use network number as the Link State ID. If that produces a conflict, examine the two networks in conflict. One will be a subset of the other. For the less specific network, use the network number as the Link State ID and for the more specific use its broadcast address instead (i.e., flip all the "host" bits to 1). In some cases (namely, the most specific network was originated first), this will cause you to originate two LSAs at once. As an example of the algorithm, consider its operation on the the following sequence of events. In the following, 10.0 is shorthand for [10.0.0.0,255.255.0.0], 10 is a shorthand for [10.0.0.0,255.0.0.0], etc. (1) Want to originate an AS external link for 10.0.0 Use a Link State ID of 10.0.0.0 (2) Now want to originate an AS external link for 10.0 Reoriginate 10.0.0 using a new Link State ID of 10.0.0.255 Originate 10.0 with a Link State ID of 10.0.0.0 (3) Now want to originate an AS external link for 10 Reoriginate 10.0 as 10.0.255.255 Originate 10 with a Link State ID of 10 10.0.0 keeps its Link State ID of 10.0.0.255 [Moy] [Page 208] Internet Draft OSPF Version 2 November 1992 Security Considerations All OSPF protocol exchanges are authenticated. This is accomplished through authentication fields contained in the OSPF packet header. For more information, see Sections 8.1, 8.2, and Appendix D. Author's Address John Moy Proteon, Inc. 9 Technology Drive Westborough, MA 01581 Phone: (508) 898-2800 Email: jmoy@proteon.com This document expires in April 1993. [Moy] [Page 209]