Network Working Group A. Retana
Request for Comments: 3137 L. Nguyen
Category: Informational R. White
Cisco Systems
A. Zinin
Nexsi Systems
D. McPherson
Amber Networks
June 2001
OSPF Stub Router Advertisement
Status of this Memo
This memo provides information for the Internet community. It does
not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of this
memo is unlimited.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2001). All Rights Reserved.
Abstract
This memo describes a backward-compatible technique that may be used
by OSPF (Open Shortest Path First) implementations to advertise
unavailability to forward transit traffic or to lower the preference
level for the paths through such a router. In some cases, it is
desirable not to route transit traffic via a specific OSPF router.
However, OSPF does not specify a standard way to accomplish this.
1. Motivation
In some situations, it may be advantageous to inform routers in a
network not to use a specific router as a transit point, but still
route to it. Possible situations include the following.
o The router is in a critical condition (for example, has very
high CPU load or does not have enough memory to store all LSAs
or build the routing table).
o Graceful introduction and removal of the router to/from the
network.
o Other (administrative or traffic engineering) reasons.
Retana, et al. Informational [Page 1]
RFC 3137 OSPF Stub Router Advertisement June 2001 Note that the proposed solution does not remove the router from the topology view of the network (as could be done by just flushing that router's router-LSA), but prevents other routers from using it for transit routing, while still routing packets to router's own IP addresses, i.e., the router is announced as stub. It must be emphasized that the proposed solution provides real benefits in networks designed with at least some level of redundancy so that traffic can be routed around the stub router. Otherwise, traffic destined for the networks reachable through such a stub router will be still routed through it. 2. Proposed Solution The solution described in this document solves two challenges associated with the outlined problem. In the description below, router X is the router announcing itself as a stub. 1) Making other routers prefer routes around router X while performing the Dijkstra calculation. 2) Allowing other routers to reach IP prefixes directly connected to router X. Note that it would be easy to address issue 1) alone by just flushing router X's router-LSA from the domain. However, it does not solve problem 2), since other routers will not be able to use links to router X in Dijkstra (no back link), and because router X will not have links to its neighbors. To address both problems, router X announces its router-LSA to the neighbors as follows. o costs of all non-stub links (links of the types other than 3) are set to LSInfinity (16-bit value 0xFFFF, rather than 24-bit value 0xFFFFFF used in summary and AS-external LSAs). o costs of stub links (type 3) are set to the interface output cost. This addresses issues 1) and 2). Retana, et al. Informational [Page 2]
RFC 3137 OSPF Stub Router Advertisement June 2001 3. Compatibility issues Some inconsistency may be seen when the network is constructed of the routers that perform intra-area Dijkstra calculation as specified in [RFC1247] (discarding link records in router-LSAs that have LSInfinity cost value) and routers that perform it as specified in [RFC1583] and higher (do not treat links with LSInfinity cost as unreachable). Note that this inconsistency will not lead to routing loops, because if there are some alternate paths in the network, both types of routers will agree on using them rather than the path through the stub router. If the path through the stub router is the only one, the routers of the first type will not use the stub router for transit (which is the desired behavior), while the routers of the second type will still use this path. 4. Acknowledgements The authors of this document do not make any claims on the originality of the ideas described. Among other people, we would like to acknowledge Henk Smit for being part of one of the initial discussions around this topic. 5. Security Considerations The technique described in this document does not introduce any new security issues into OSPF protocol. 6. References [RFC2328] Moy, J., "OSPF Version 2", STD 54, RFC 2328, April 1998. [RFC1247] Moy, J., "OSPF Version 2", RFC 1247, July 1991. [RFC1583] Moy, J., "OSPF Version 2", RFC 1583, March 1994. Retana, et al. Informational [Page 3]
RFC 3137 OSPF Stub Router Advertisement June 2001 7. Authors' Addresses Alvaro Retana 7025 Kit Creek Rd. Research Triangle Park, NC 27709 USA EMail: aretana@cisco.com Liem Nguyen 7025 Kit Creek Rd. Research Triangle Park, NC 27709 USA EMail: lhnguyen@cisco.com Russ White Cisco Systems, Inc. 7025 Kit Creek Rd. Research Triangle Park, NC 27709 EMail: riw@cisco.com Alex Zinin Nexsi Systems 1959 Concourse Drive San Jose,CA 95131 EMail: azinin@nexsi.com Danny McPherson Amber Networks 48664 Milmont Drive Fremont, CA 94538 EMail: danny@ambernetworks.com Retana, et al. Informational [Page 4]
RFC 3137 OSPF Stub Router Advertisement June 2001 8. Full Copyright Statement Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2001). All Rights Reserved. This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are included on all such copies and derivative works. However, this document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than English. The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns. This document and the information contained herein is provided on an "AS IS" basis and THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Acknowledgement Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the Internet Society. Retana, et al. Informational [Page 5]
mirror server hosted at Truenetwork, Russian Federation.