nanog mailing list archives

Re: IGPs in use


From: Tony Li <tli () juniper net>
Date: 13 Oct 1998 15:18:00 -0700

hcb () clark net (Howard C. Berkowitz) writes:

When I gave my OSPF tutorial at NANOG in June, I stressed OSPF shouldn't be
thought of purely as a 2-level hierarchy with a routing domain consisting
of an area 0 and a set of nonzero areas.   Some of the OSPF scaling
problems I see, and these are probably equally likely in IS-IS, come from
people trying to put everything into a single OSPF routing domain.  Aside
from performance issues, this can become a network administration nightmare.

Splitting the interior network into several IGP routing domains, and
linking these with a backbone-of-backbones, helps both performance and
administration.  The backbone group doesn't need to be concerned with LAN
installations in a POP or customer site. Depending on the particular
network, you might link IGP routing domains with:

       -- static routes
       -- iBGP, putting all IGPs in a single AS
       -- iBGP and eBGP in a confederation
       -- Hybrid layer 2/3 techniques, such as linking IGP-routed domains
          to internal layer 2 "superhubs"

How much IGP support you need will depend on your network. A large
enterprise, or a provider of both connectivity and content, will probably
need more IGP stuff than a pure connectivity provider.


Howard,

Yes, those sound like a list of administrative nightmares.  ;-)

Wouldn't it be much easier to make use of a three or four level
hierarchical IGP?

Tony


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