Link State Protocol

Design by
Jignesh Patel
Palanivel Rathinam
Vishwesh Tendolkar
Overview

 Representation of routers and networks

 Assumptions
 Routing protocol packets
 Implementation requirements
 Protocol data structures
 Implementation issues
 Protocol headers
Representation of routers and networks

 Each router will be a process identified by a

unique id
 No configuration files - command line arguments
 Port numbers play the role of interfaces
RA

2000 2001

3000
RB RC
Contd.

 The command line arguments for the above

network topology is
 Router RA 2000 2001
 Router RB 2000 3000
 Router RC 2001 3000
 Constraints: If a new node is to be added or
an existing node is to be deleted, should
restart the router process
Assumptions

 No hierarchical routing
 All route processes run on the same machine
 Routing computation is decoupled from the
protocol
Routing protocol packets

 There are five types of packets. Each packet

is identified by the packet type in common
header
 Type 1 packet – Hello
 Type 2 packet – Database Description
 Type 3 packet – Link state request
 Type 4 packet – Link state update
 Type 5 packet – Link state acknowledgment
Implementation requirements

 Thread
 Timers
 Single-shot
 Interval – avoid synchronization by adding small
random values
 LSA type – Router LSA
 List manipulation primitives
Protocol data structures
 Router ID – 32 bit number
 Routing table
 Interface list
 Interface data structure
 Type
 IP interface address
 IP interface mask
 Hello interval
 Router dead interval
 Delay
 Hello timer – fires hello packets every hello interval
 Neighbor router
Contd.

 Interface data structure

 Interface output cost – expressed in link state
metric
 Retransmit interval – number of seconds between
LSA retransmissions
 Interface state (DOWN/UP)
 Interface state machine DOWN

Interface up

UP
Contd.
 Neighbor list
 Neighbor data structure
 State
 Inactivity timer – single-shot timer whose length is router
dead interval
 Master/slave
 Database description sequence number
 Last DD packet received (DD header)
 Neighbor ID – router ID of neighboring router – this is
learned after receiving the hello packet
 Neighbor IP address
Contd.

 List of router LSA (this is the link state

information/database. This is generated for
each router in the network)
 Link state retransmission list
 Link state request list
Contd.

 Neighbor state machine

DOWN

HELLO RECEIVED

INIT
TWO -WAY RECEIVED
ONE-WAY RECEIVED

2-WAY EX-START

NEGOTIATION DONE

EXCHANGE

EXCHANGE DONE

LOADING FULL
LOADING DONE
Contd.

 Routing table structure

 Destination type
 Destination ID
 Address mask
 Cost
 Next hop – router ID
Implementation issues
 We are not using TCP based connection for
information exchange, although some routing
protocols use it (BGP)
 Raw IP cannot be used to make processes
communicate on the same machine. Since Raw IP
is void of any transport layer protocol and hence the
ports, processes should use the protocol number in
IP to identify packets destined to them. This
approach is not feasible
 UDP although unreliable helps communication
between multiple processes through ports. Also
UDP has a built in checksum calculation
Contd.

 Our link state protocol uses UDP for its

communication
 Presentation layer is binary
 Java is used as the programming language
Protocol headers

 The link state protocol is layered. It has a

common header which is given below

Packet length (no. of words

Version # = 1 Type = {1,…5} including header)

Router ID = R1
Contd.

Packet format for the hello protocol

Hello Interval = 10msec Dead time Interval = 5sec

Neighbor list = {R2,R3,R1}

…
Contd.

 All link state messages share a common

header which is depicted below

Age = 5 Sequence number = 3

Link state ID = 2000

Advertising Router = R1
Contd.

 The link state advertisement includes

information about the link and cost metric.
We have used the metric from EIGRP to
include delay, bandwidth and reliability

# links = 1

Link ID = R1

Link Data = 2000

Metric = w1 * cost + w2* delay + w3* bandwidth

Contd.

 Link state updates. When a router receives a

link state request packet during database
synchronization or a multiple LSAs from
neighbors, it sends a LSU. The packet format
is shown below
# LSAs = 1

Link state advertisements

…
Contd.

 The database description packet is shown

below

Interface MTU = 512 UNUSED I M M/S

DD SEQUENCE NUMBER = time of day

LSA HEADER
Questions / Suggestions

?/ !
References

 RFC 2328, OSPF v2

 Routing in the Internet – by Christin Hieutema
 CS526 Manuscript – Dr. Deep Medhi &
Karthik Ramaswamy