OSPF
Neighbors and adjacencies
In areas with two or more routing devices, neighbors and adjacencies are formed.
Neighbors are routing devices that maintain information about each others’ health. To establish neighbor relationships, routing devices periodically send hello packets on each of their interfaces. All routing devices that share a common network segment, appear in the same area, and have the same health parameters (hello and dead intervals) and authentication parameters respond to each other’s hello packets and become neighbors. Neighbors continue to send periodic hello packets to advertise their health to neighbors. In turn, they listen to hello packets to determine the health of their neighbors and to establish contact with new neighbors.
The hello process is used for electing one of the neighbors as the area’s Designated Router (DR) and one as the area’s Backup Designated Router (BDR). The DR is adjacent to all other neighbors and acts as the central contact for database exchanges. Each neighbor sends its database information to the DR, which relays the information to the other neighbors.
The BDR is adjacent to all other neighbors (including the DR). Each neighbor sends its database information to the BDR just as with the DR, but the BDR merely stores this data and does not distribute it. If the DR fails, the BDR will take over the task of distributing database information to the other neighbors.
OSPF is a
Each routing device transmits a
When LSAs result in changes to the routing device’s LSDB, the routing device forwards the changes to the adjacent neighbors (the DR and BDR) for distribution to the other neighbors.
OSPF routing updates occur only when changes occur, instead of periodically. For each new route, if an adjacency is interested in that route (for example, if configured to receive static routes and the new route is indeed static), an update message containing the new route is sent to the adjacency. For each route removed from the route table, if the route has already been sent to an adjacency, an update message containing the route to withdraw is sent.
Shortest Path First Tree
The routing devices use a
The cost of an individual interface in OSPF is an indication of the overhead required to send packets across it. The cost is inversely proportional to the bandwidth of the interface. A lower cost indicates a higher bandwidth.
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