RFC 2329 (rfc2329) - Page 2 of 9
OSPF Standardization Report
Alternative Format: Original Text Document
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