Deploying a single-area OSPF internetwork

Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2003 with SP1, Windows Server 2003 with SP2

Deploying a single-area OSPF internetwork

While Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) is a routing protocol designed to scale to very large internetworks, the planning and implementation of a large scale OSPF internetwork is complex and time-consuming. However, you do not need a large or very large internetwork to take advantage of the advanced features of OSPF.

In the Windows Server 2003 family implementation of OSPF, the default values of global and interface settings make it very easy to create a single-area OSPF internetwork with minimal configuration. The single area is the backbone area (0.0.0.0).

OSPF default global settings

The OSPF default global settings are as follows:

  • The router identification is set to the IP address of the first IP binding at the time of the installation of the OSPF routing protocol.

  • The router is not configured as an OSPF autonomous system boundary router.

  • A single area, the backbone area, is configured and enabled for a plaintext password. It is not configured as a stub area and there are no address ranges.

  • There are no configured virtual interfaces, and external routes are not filtered.

For a single-area OSPF internetwork, no changes to the OSPF default global settings are required.

OSPF default interface settings

The OSPF default interface settings for LAN interfaces are as follows:

  • By default, OSPF is not enabled to run over the interface.

  • The area ID is set to the backbone area (0.0.0.0).

  • The router priority is set to 1. With multiple OSPF routers on the same network with the same router priority, the OSPF designated router and backup designated router are elected based on the router with the highest router ID.

  • The cost is set to 2.

  • The password is set to 12345678.

  • The network type is set to broadcast for LAN interfaces.

  • There are no configured neighbors.

  • The hello interval is set to 10 seconds.

  • The dead interval is set to 40 seconds.

For a single-area OSPF internetwork, the only required change to the OSPF default interface settings is to enable OSPF to run over the interface.

Deploying OSPF

To deploy an OSPF single-area internetwork that consists of LAN interfaces, perform the following steps on each server running Routing and Remote Access:

  1. Enable the Routing and Remote Access service. For more information, see Enable the Routing and Remote Access service.

  2. Add the OSPF routing protocol. For more information, see Add the OSPF routing protocol.

  3. Add the routing interfaces of the router to the OSPF routing protocol, enabling OSPF for each interface. For more information, see Add an interface to OSPF.

Testing OSPF

To test your single-area OSPF internetwork, you can perform the following steps:

  1. To verify that a server running Routing and Remote Access is receiving OSPF announcements from all of its adjacent OSPF routers, view the OSPF neighbors for the router. For more information, see View OSPF neighbors.

  2. For each router, view the IP routing table and verify that all of the routes that should be learned from OSPF are present. For more information, see View routing tables.

  3. Use the ping and tracert commands to test connectivity between host computers so that all routing paths are checked. For more information about the ping and tracert commands, see Using the ping command and Using the tracert command.

For information about troubleshooting OSPF, see Troubleshooting OSPF.

Notes

  • This feature is not available on the Itanium-based versions of the Windows operating systems.

  • This content is not available in this preliminary release.