Minor Project Report

Project Title

OSPF
( OPEN SHORTEST PATH FIRST )

Team Members:-

NAME ROLL NO
SABYASACHI MALLIK 805128

SARTHAK CHAMPATIROY 805138

SWASTIK PATRA 805168

SAGARIKA MAHAPATRA 805129

GUIDED BY :- Prof. Tanmaya Swain

Abstract:-
This paper is based on the OSPF (Open Shortest Path First) routing technique. OSPF
was created in the mid-1980s to overcome many of the deficiencies and scalability
problems that RIP had in large enterprise networks. OSPF is perhaps the most
widely-used interior gateway protocol (IGP) in large enterprise networks. An interior
gateway protocol (IGP) is a routing protocol that is used to exchange routing
information within an autonomous system (AS). Because it is based on an open
standard, OSPF is very popular in many corporate networks today and has many
advantages, including these:
It will run on most routers, since it is based on an open standard.
It uses the SPF algorithm, developed by Edsger Dijkstra, to provide a loop free
topology.
It provides fast convergence with triggered, incremental updates via link state
advertisements (LSAs).
It is a classless protocol and allows for a hierarchical design with VLSM and route
summarization.
It has an intelligent metric (cost), which is the inverse of the bandwidth of an
interface.

To provide scalability for large networks,OSPF supports two important concepts(ie.

Autonomous Systems and Areas).OSPF implements a two layer hierarchy:the
backbone and areas off the backbone.Within an autonomous system , areas are used
to provide hierarchical routing.Through a correct hierarchical design,we can scale
OSPF to very large sizes of network.

Typically, when you start having more than 50 routers, Cisco recommends you use a
more advanced routing protocol such as OSPF or EIGRP. In a mixed vendor
environment there is basically one choice between these two: OSPF.

This paper is solely based on the study, configuration and working of the OSPF
Routing Technique.
Introduction:-

The Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) protocol which is an Interior

Gateway Protocol (IGP) used to distribute routing information within a single
Autonomous System (AS). OSPF (Open Shortest Path First) protocol was
developed due to a need in the internet community to introduce a high functionality
non-proprietary Internal Gateway Protocol (IGP) for the TCP/IP protocol family.
The OSPF protocol is based on link-state technology which is not based on the
Bellman-Ford vector based algorithms used in traditional Internet routing protocols
such as RIP. OSPF has introduced new concepts such as authentication of routing
updates, Variable Length Subnet Masks (VLSM), route summarization, etc.

What is an Autonomous System?

A collection of routers under a single administrative authority, using a common
Interior Gateway Protocol for routing packets is called an Autonomous System
(AS). On the Internet, an autonomous system (AS) is the unit of routing policy,
either a single network or a group of networks that is controlled by a common
network administrator (or group of administrators) on behalf of a single
administrative entity (such as a university, a business enterprise, or a business
division). An autonomous system is also sometimes referred to as a routing domain.
An autonomous system is assigned a globally unique number, sometimes called an
Autonomous System Number (ASN).Networks within an autonomous system
communicate routing information to each other using an Interior Gateway Protocol
(IGP). An autonomous system shares routing information with other autonomous
systems using the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP).

What is an Interior Gateway Protocol?

An Internet protocol which distributes routing information to the routers within an
autonomous system is called Interior Gateway Protocol (IGP).
An IGP (Interior Gateway Protocol) is a protocol for exchanging routing information
between gateways (hosts with routers) within an autonomous network (for example,
a system of corporatelocal area networks). The routing information can then be used
by the Internet Protocol (IP) or other network protocols to specify how to route.

What is meant by Link State?

A link is an interface on the router. The state of the link is a description of that
interface and of its relationship to its neighboring routers. A description of the
interface would include, for example,the IP address of the interface, the mask, the
type of network it is connected to, the routers connected to that network and so on.
The collection of all these link-states would form a linkstate database.
Link-State Algorithm
OSPF uses a link-state algorithm in order to build and calculate the shortest path to
all known destinations.
Following is a brief description of the various steps of the algorithm:
1. Upon initialization or due to any change in routing information, a router will
generate a linkstate advertisement. This advertisement will represent the collection
of all link-states on that router.
2. All routers will exchange link-states by means of flooding. Each router that
receives a linkstate update should store a copy in its link-state database and then
propagate the update to other routers.
3. After the database of each router is completed, the router will calculate a Shortest
Path Tree to all destinations. The router uses the Dijkstra algorithm to calculate the
shortest path tree. The destinations, the associated cost and the next hop to reach
those destinations will form the IP routing table.
4. In case no changes in the OSPF network occur, such as cost of a link or a network
being added or deleted, OSPF should be very quiet. Any changes that occur are
communicated via link-state packets, and the Dijkstra algorithm is recalculated to
find the shortest path.

OSPF Areas
An OSPF network can be divided into sub-domains called areas. An area is a logical
collection of OSPF networks, routers, and links that have the same area
identification.. A router within an area must maintain a topological database for the
area to which it belongs. The router doesn't have any detailed information about
networks outside of its area, thereby reducing the size of its database.Areas are
identified by an area ID. If there are multiple areas in a network, it is required to
namethe backbone area "area 0". Since this backbone connects the areas in the
network, it must be a contiguous area. If the backbone is partitioned, parts of the
autonomous system will be unreachable, and there will be need to configure virtual
links to repair the partition.

Advantages over Routing Internet Protocol (RIP)

With OSPF, there is no limitation on the hop count.
The intelligent use of VLSM is very useful in IP address allocation.
OSPF uses IP multicast to send link-state updates. This ensures less processing on
routers that are not listening to OSPF packets. Also, updates are only sent in case
routing changes occur instead of periodically. This ensures a better use of
bandwidth.
OSPF has better convergence than RIP. This is because routing changes are
propagated instantaneously and not periodically.
OSPF allows for better load balancing.
OSPF allows for a logical definition of networks where routers can be divided into
 areas. This will limit the explosion of link state updates over the whole network.
This also provides a mechanism for aggregating routes and cutting down on the
unnecessary propagation of subnet information.
OSPF allows for routing authentication by using different methods of password
authentication.
OSPF allows for the transfer and tagging of external routes injected into an
Autonomous System. This keeps track of external routes injected by exterior
protocols such as BGP.

Objective & Scope of the project:-

Implementation of the OSPF Routing Protocol for data transfer over the network using
the Cisco Packet Tracer Simulator. Comparison of the OSPF Routing protocol with
previous existing Routing protocol (ie RIP).

Problem Definition:-

A routing protocol is considered to be operated at layer three of the Open System

Interconnection model. There are several types of routing protocols being widely used in
the network.Routing Information Protocol (RIP) is a distance-vector routing protocol,
which employs the hop count as a routing metric with the difficulty that Most RIP
networks are flat. There is no concept of areas or boundaries in RIP networks where as
OSPF is a link-state interior gateway protocol based on Dijkstra algorithm (Shortest Path
First Algorithm),which employs Cost as a routing metric. OSPF routing protocol has
difficulty to configure network and high memory requirements.

A result more care about performance, measurement and verification is needed, which
calls for the contribution of this project work. Our first goal is to study about routing
protocols and thus to enhance our knowledge as well. Our second goal is to be familiar
with CISCO PACKET TRACER simulator and to implement our proposed network
models in CISCO PACKET TRACER Simulator. In this project, we consider two
routing protocols RIP and OSPF. Our research question is; how well OSPF performs
over RIP?

We will design a network model with OSPF, configure and simulate by using CISCO
PACKET TRACER and observe the impact of using OSPF over RIP.