nanog mailing list archives

Re: IGP protocol


From: James Bensley <jwbensley () gmail com>
Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2018 13:53:54 +0000

On Tue, 13 Nov 2018 at 12:09, Saku Ytti <saku () ytti fi> wrote:

On Tue, 13 Nov 2018 at 12:37, Mark Tinka <mark.tinka () seacom mu> wrote:

Main reasons:
    - Doesn't run over IP.

Why is this upside? I've seen on two platforms (7600, MX) ISIS punted
on routers running ISIS without interface having ISIS.  With no
ability to limit it, so any connected interface can DoS device with
trivial pps rate, if ISIS is being ran.

I guess the OPs original question wasn't clear enough because, I think
most people are talking about IS-IS vs OSPF2/3 from a theoretical
protocol perspective, and you're talking from a practical vendor
implementation perspective.

From a purely theoretical perspective I see IS-IS not running over IP
as an advantage too. No mater what routes I inject into my IGP, IS-IS
won't stop working. I may totally fsck my IP reachability but IS-IS
will still work, which means that when I fix the issue, service should
be restored quite quickly. Several networks I've seen place management
in a VRF / L3 VPN, which means that by the time you have remote
management access, everything else is already working, it's like the
last thing to come up when there's been a problem. I like the
"management in the IGP + IS-IS" design.

However, in reality the vendor implementation blows the protocol
design out of the water. You need to consider both when evaluating a
new IGP. Cisco nearly implemented a handy feature with
prefix-suppression, whereby in IOS for OSPF only one would prevent
p-t-p links being advertised into the IGP database. But they didn't
implement this for IS-IS. Then in IOS-XR they removed this feature
from OSPF and implemented it for IS-IS ?!?! So yeah, vendors
implementations are just as important and the theoretical potential of
the protocol.

Oh yeah, forgot to answer the original question. For a greenfield
deployment I'd be happy with either OSPFv3 or IS-IS as long as it's
well designed I don't see much between them, it would come down to
vendor support then.

Cheers,
James.


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