Chapter 19 - Understanding OSPF Concepts Flashcards
What are some examples of routing protocols.
- RIP (Routing Information Protocol)
- EIGRP (Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol) - Previously known as the Cisco proprietary IGRP
- OSPF (Open Shortest Path First)
- BGP (Border Gateway Protocol)
What is a Routed/Routable Protcol?
These terms refer to a protocol that defines a packet structure and logical addressing (e.g. IPv4 and IPv6).
What is Path Selection?
The process that a routing protocol uses to choose the best route to a destination.
What is the relationship between Routing Protocols and Routed/Routable Protocols?
Routing protocols forward packets with address defined by routed protocols. For example, OSPF defines a process for routing IPv4 packets.
What are the general functions of a routing protocol?
- Learn routing information about subnets from neighboring routers.
- Advertise routing information about subnets to neighboring routers.
- Choose the best route to a destination based on a certain metric. The lower the metric, the better.
- React to changes in the network topology. For example by advertising that some routes have failed and a new best route (known as convergence).
What is an IGP?
An Interior Gateway Protocol is a routing protocol that was designed to be used inside a single AS (Autonomous System). Examples of these would be OSPF, RIP, EIGRP (Enchanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol)
What is an EGP?
An Exterior Gateway Protocol is a routing protocol that was designed to be used between multiple AS (Autonomous System). An example of one is BGP.
What is an AS (Autonomous System)?
- An Autonomous System is a network or group of networks under the administrative control of a single organisation.
- For example a network(s) paid for and managed by a school or an ISP could be an AS.
What organisation assigns ASNs (Autonomous System Numbers)?
IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority)
What is a Routing Protocol Algorithm?
The logic that routing protocols use to learn routes, choose the best route for a destination, and converge in reaction to network topology changes. The three main ones are:
- Distance Vector (Sometimes called Bellman-Ford after its creator) (IGP)
- Path Vector (EGP)
- Link-State (IGP)
- There is also Advanced Distance Vector (Sometimes called Balanced Hybrid)
What are the three IGP Routing Protocol Algorithms?
- Distance Vector (Sometimes called Bellman-Ford after its creator)
- Advanced Distance Vector (Sometimes called Balanced Hybrid)
- Link-State
What routing protocols use Link-State algorithms?
- OSPF
- IS-IS (Intermediate System to Intermediate System)
What routing protocols use Advanced Distance Vector algorithms?
- EIGRP (Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol)
What metrics are used by RIP, OSPF, IS-IS, and EIGRP?
- OSPF - Cost - The cost of each link is determined by its bandwidth (ref bandwidth/interface bandwidth). The total metric is the cumulative cost of all links in the route.
- IS-IS - Cost - The cost of each link is determined by its bandwidth. Unlike OSPF, the cost of each link is not automatically calculated, and the cost of every link is 10 by default. So if this is not changed, IS-IS is indifferent to RIP.
- RIP - Hop Count - The number of outgoing interfaces between a router and a destination subnet
- EIGRP - Bandwidth and Delay Calculation (by default) - Calculated based on the route’s slowest link and the cumulative delay associated with each interface along the route. The delay is a metric assigned to each interface based on its bandwidth.
Describe a benefit of OSPF over RIP?
RIP will always take the shortest route regardless of how slow the links are. OSPF may take a longer route but overall it will be faster as its metric uses interface bandwidth. (i.e. 3 gigabit links are better than a single serial link of 1000kbps.)
What does the ‘bandwidth’ command do?
- It tells higher level protocols what the available bandwidth on an interface is. This can be used to force OSPF routes since, without this configured, OSPF will just take the interface’s speed as its bandwidth.
- Doesn’t affect the actual speed of an interface.
- Not recommended to change this specifically for OSPF, as this setting is used in calculations done by other protocols (e.g. EIGRP).
- Entered in Kilobits
- Example: Would be useful if you were using a 10Mbps Ethernet cable between two Gigabit interfaces as the router would assume that the bandwidth is Gigabit even though the link would never reach this speed.
What routing protocols use Distance Vector algorithms?
- RIPv2
True or False. OSPF is a classful routing protocol.
False. OSPF is a classless routing protocol like RIPv2 and EIGRP. RIP and IGRP are classful.
True or False. EIGRP is a Cisco proprietary protocol.
True. Although they publish it as a public RFC for vendors to use.
What is Route Redistribution?
The ability for a router to advertise routes learned in one routing protocol using a different routing protocol.
What is Administrative Distance?
- A number that defines how believable a routing protocol is on a single router.
- The reason this is necessary is in scenarios where route redistribution is being utilised and a route to a single subnet is learned by both protocols. Both protocols use different metrics and therefore cannot be compared.
- The administrative distance will essentially act as a tie breaker.
- EIGRP has a lower administrative distance than OSPF so regardless of the metric for the OSPF route, the EIGRP route will be seen as best. This can be changed in Cisco routers.
Routing Protocol Administrative Distances
Connected - 0
Static - 1
eBGP - 20
EIGRP (internal routes) - 90
IGRP - 100
OSPF - 110
IS-IS - 115
RIP - 120
EIGRP (external routes) -170
iBGP - 200
DHCP Default Route - 254
Unusable - 255
What is Dijkstra SPF?
Dijkstra Shortest Path First is a mathematical algorithm that allows a router using a link-state routing protocol to query its LSDB and build the shortest route to a destination based on that information.
What are OSPF Neighbors?
OSPF enabled routers that are connected to the same network and are part of the same area. They have also gone through the Hello process to decide that they will become neighbors.
What is an OSPF RID?
- 32-bit number that is used as the unique identifier of a router for OSPF communication.
- A router will choose its RID from one of the following:
- Manual configuration
- Highest loopback interface IP
- Highest physical interface IP
True or False. OSPF neighbors must be part of the same subnet in order to become neighbors.
True. However it is possible to also achieve a neighbor relationship over PPP using two /32 addresses.
What address are OSPF Hello messages sent to?
- 224.0.0.5 which is a multicast address designated for all OSPF speaking routers (known as the “All SPF Routers” multicast address)
- The Hello messages are encapsulated in an IP header with a value of 89 in the Protocol field
What are the 7 OSPF states in order?
- Down - No Hellos have been sent or received to or from OSPF neighbors but they can be.
(Optional) - Attempt - Only used in NBMA (Non-Broadcast Multi Access) environments. - Init - A Hello has been received from another router but the local router’s RID was not included. The local router must then respond with its RID in a Hello message.
- Two-Way - when DR and BDR are elected. Indicates that both neighbors have received Hellos with their own RID included along wth the neighboring router’s RID. Each router only enters this state in the other’s neighbors table if it has sent a Hello message with both RIDs in. All conditions have now been met for the routers to become neighbors.
- ExStart - The neighbors negotiate a master and slave neighbor by exchanging DBD (Databse Description) packets to decide who will begin the LSA exchange. The router with the higher RID becomes the master and defines the sequence numbers that are listed against each LSA (for LS Request purposes).
- Exchange - The routers provide a list of LSAs (Using DBDs) that they are going to send information for. Not the routing information included within them. They compare the information in the DBDs to their own LSDBs to see what LSAs they need.
- Loading - Neighbors send LSR (Link State Request) messages to request LSAs they don’t already have. The LSAs are then sent in LSU (Link State Update) messages. To acknowledge receipt of the LSAs, each router sends LSAck messages.
- Full - Both neighbors have fully exchanged the contents of their LSDB. They then send Hello messages on the Hello interval to ensure the adjacency continues and the Dead timer is not reached. If it is not then they will continue to share LSAs as the network changes.