Advanced Configuration and Management Guide

When only one router on the network claims the DR role despite neighboring routers with higher priorities or router IDs, this router remains the DR. This is also true for BDRs.

The DR and BDR election process is performed when one of the following events occurs:

an interface is in a waiting state and the wait time expires

an interface is in a waiting state and a hello packet is received that addresses the BDR

a change in the neighbor state occurs, such as:

a neighbor state transitions from 2 or higher

communication to a neighbor is lost

a neighbor declares itself to be the DR or BDR for the first time

OSPF RFC 1583 and 2178 Compliance

HP routing switches are configured, by default, to be compliant with the RFC 1583 OSPF V2 specification. HP routing switches can also be configured to operate with the latest OSPF standard, RFC 2178.

NOTE: For details on how to configure the system to operate with the RFC 2178, see “Configuring OSPF” on page 8-7.

Reduction of Equivalent AS External LSAs

An OSPF ASBR uses AS External link advertisements (AS External LSAs) to originate advertisements of a route to another routing domain, such as a BGP4 or RIP domain. The ASBR advertises the route to the external domain by flooding AS External LSAs to all the other OSPF routers (except those inside stub networks) within the local OSPF Autonomous System (AS).

In some cases, multiple ASBRs in an AS can originate equivalent LSAs. The LSAs are equivalent when they have the same cost, the same next hop, and the same destination. Software release 07.1.X and later optimize OSPF by eliminating duplicate AS External LSAs in this case. The routing switch with the lower router ID flushes the duplicate External LSAs from its database and thus does not flood the duplicate External LSAs into the OSPF AS. AS External LSA reduction therefore reduces the size of the routing switch’s link state database.

This enhancement implements the portion of RFC 2328 that describes AS External LSA reduction. This enhancement is enabled by default, requires no configuration, and cannot be disabled.

Figure 8.4 shows an example of the AS External LSA reduction feature. In this example, HP routing switches D and E are OSPF ASBRs, and thus communicate route information between the OSPF AS, which contains Routers A, B, and C, and another routing domain, which contains Router F. The other routing domain is running another routing protocol, such as BGP4 or RIP. Routers D, E, and F, therefore, are each running both OSPF and either BGP4 or RIP.

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