OSPF

The term OSPF is an acronym for Open Shortest Path First, with reference to the networking world. This technology is an interior gateway routing protocol for internet protocol or IP networks, throughout the world. This protocol makes use of the state link routing algorithm and can be used within a single Autonomous system or AS. There are two versions present of this protocol that are defined in the RFC. The Version 2 of the OSPF is defined in the RFC 2328 and it is was defined in 1998 for the internet protocol version 4 or IPv4, and the updated version of this OSPF, that could work with the internet protocol version 6 or IPv6 was defined in the RFC 5340 under the name of OSPF version 3 and this version was released in the year 2008.

Open shortest path first or OSPF is one of the most widely used interior gateway protocol or IGP throughout the world in large enterprise networks. There are many other IGPs protocols present in the market, however; still this OSPF beats them all. This OSPF technology domain is divided into various different areas that are all labeled with the 32 bit area identifiers. These areas are basically logical grouping of the hosts and the networks, which also include their routers and interfaces, which are connected to any of the included network. The name of the areas in which the OSPF domain is divided are, Backbone area, Stub area, which is further divided in two different areas, named, not so stubby area and proprietary extensions. The third and major area in the OSPF domain is called as the transits area.

For the OSPF technology to run properly in a network, it is necessary to have certain amount of routers in the network, as without the router the technology is useless and it won’t work. Now in this technology, there are specific routers present for specific area and they are Area border routers, Autonomous System boundary routers, internal routers and backbone routers.