RFC 2329 (rfc2329) - Page 2 of 9

OSPF Standardization Report

RFC 2329            OSPF Standardization Report             April 1998


1.  Introduction

    OSPFv2, herein abbreviated simply as OSPF, is an IPv4 routing
    protocol documented in [Ref8]. OSPF is a link-state routing
    protocol.  It is designed to be run internal 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
    features include the following:

    o   OSPF responds quickly to topology changes, expending a minimum
        of network bandwidth in the process.

    o   Support for CIDR addressing.

    o   OSPF routing exchanges can be authenticated, providing routing
        security.

    o   Equal-cost multipath.

    o   An area routing capability is provided, enabling an Autonomous
        system to be split into a two level hierarchy to further reduce
        the amount of routing protocol traffic.

    o   OSPF allows import of external routing information into the
        Autonomous System, including a tagging feature that can be
        exploited to exchange extra information at the AS boundary (see
        [Ref7]).

    An analysis of OSPF together with a more detailed description of
    OSPF features was originally provided in [Ref6], as a part of
    promoting OSPF to Draft Standard status. The analysis of OSPF
    remains unchanged. Two additional major features have been developed
    for OSPF since the protocol achieved Draft Standard status: the
    Point-to-MultiPoint interface and Cryptographic Authentication.
    These features are described in Sections 2.1 and 2.2 respectively of
    this memo.

    The OSPF MIB is documented in [Ref4]. It is currently at Draft
    Standard status.












Moy                          Informational