How to configure OSPF Summarization

#40

Renee

Hopelijk alles goed is in nederland …

I am looking at your summarisation of your connected interfaces into OSPF which looks really cool - well straight forward since you immediately put all your connected interfaces into ospf right with a single command instead of specifying any network statements under your ospf process ???

So, from an overall ‘good standard practice’ perspective … would you recommend this INSTEAD of enabling or specifying your connected netowrks (lets take a number of SVI’s on a layer 3 switch as an example) as a network statement under the OSPF process … or are both methods equally valid … ??? The main reason prompting this question is the generation of Type 5 LSA into OSPF when redistrbuting your connected interfaces (or networks) and in doing so would this create any potential problems in general ospf operation across your network in that there may be some limitations on the behaviour of type 5 LSA’s and how they are interpreted when traversing a multi-area network … ??

Many Thanks hartelijk dank
Will V

#41

William,
You are correct in your concern about the impact of Type-5 LSAs versus using an Intra-Area route. Type-5 LSAs traverse the entire OSPF domain (except for Stub areas) and must be processed separately. If you had the ability instead to use a “Network” statement instead of redistribution, it would cause less impact on OSPF. You would benefit from Area summarization at the ABRs as well.

#42

Andrew,

Thank you very much.

Rota

#43

Hi Rene,

When we actually use “network” command and when we use “redistribution” . My query is based on the below line.

Instead of using the network command to advertise the prefixes on the loopback interfaces I’m going to redistribute them into OSPF.

Regards,
Ananth

#44

HI Rene,

ABR router will create a null0 interface to avoid routing loops, what does that means how routing loops will happen here.
pls carify this.

#45

Ananth,
Use the network command when you want a prefix to be native to OSPF. Only prefixes that are directly connected to an OSPF node are eligible for this. The network command will generate a Type 1 LSA and the route will considered internal to an area.

The redistribute command will generate a Type 5 (or in some cases Type 7) LSA, and the route will be considered external to OSPF. While the most common case is when you want routes learned from other routing protocols to be introduced to OSPF, it is possible, as you saw in the lesson, to redistribute “Connected” or “Static” routes.

External routes are generally more of a burden to OSPF because their flood scope is across the entire autonomous system as opposed to just within a single area with internal routes. So if you are given the choice between a network statement or redistribute statement, make sure you have a specific reason to choose redistribute.

#46

Rohitendu,
To understand why an ABR installs the summary route to null 0, let’s imagine a really simple network with just two Routers: A and B with the following properties:
-Router A is in Area 0
-Router B is an ABR between Areas 0 and 1
-Router B has a default route that goes to Router A

Now, let’s say that Area 1 has the following networks: 172.16.0.0/24, 172.16.1.0/24, and 172.16.2.0/24. You want to summarize Area 1 on Router B into Area 0. To do this, you would use an “area range” command with the summary address of 172.16.0.0/22. Note: this summary address would include all of the following /24 networks: 172.16.0.0/24, 172.16.1.0/24, 172.16.2.0/24, and 172.16.3.0/24.

Let’s imagine what would happen if Router B did NOT create the null route for that summary. Suppose Router A gets a packet destined for 172.16.3.50. What will happen?

  1. The summary address from Router B includes the address of 172.16.3.50, so router A will send the packet to router B.
  2. Router B receives the packet, but recall from the scenario, that it doesn’t actually have the 172.16.3.0/24 network in Area 1. Since it doesn’t have a specific route to that network, Router B will use its default route back to Router A. Router B sends the packet to Router A.
  3. Router A sends it to back to Router B because of the summary route.

This back and forth will continue until the TTL expires, and this is a routing loop.

So what does the summary route to null do for us on Router B? As you can imagine, it changes the behavior in step #2 above. When Router A sends the packet to Router B, Router B simply drops it rather than sending it back to A.

#47

hi Rene,
i have tried to understand summarization by myself, but only after your topic all became clear. Thank you for explanation and demonstration with practice.

#48

19 posts were merged into an existing topic: How to configure OSPF Summarization

#49

Can any body please explain me more about NULL 0 interface and AD for that route…

#50

The null interface is typically used in summarization to prevent forwarding certain packets. Here’s an older reply by me that explains it:

#51

Hello Sims,

I tried a different example from the one which are shown in the lesson, just to make sure that I understand OSPF summarization well enough. But unfortunately, I couldn’t make it work. Can you please review and let me know what’s done wrong? Thank you for your support.

R1-R3-R5 (Area 1)
R1-R2 (Area 0 - Gbps link* and reference bandwidth has been adapted to all routers to 1000)
R2-R4-R6 (Area 2 - but it’s not configured / used in this example)

R1 f1/0 and g0/0 interfaces have “ip ospf priority 2” to make the R1 the DR for all the segments.
R3 router-id: 3.3.3.3 and lo if IP addresses are advertised in ospf with “ip ospf 1 area 1” command
R5 router-id: 5.5.5.5 and lo if IP addresses are advertised in ospf with “ip ospf 1 area 1” command.

R1 ABR learns the routes via OSPF , marked as “O” in its routing table and same routes are LSA Type3 routes on R2 and shown as “O IA”. So at this stage, I return back to R1 to run the OSPF command "area 0 range " but still after this command the routes are not summarized in R2 and are shown as before.

Summary -routes for lo networks
10.10.8.0 255.255.248.0 (R5 loopbacks)
172.16.16.0 255.255.248.0 (R3 loopbacks)

#52

Hi @tsirgogik

Which area range command did you use? On R1, this should work:

router ospf 1
area 0 range 10.10.8.0 255.255.248.0

You can make your summary a bit more specific btw, 255.255.252.0 will cover 10.10.8.0/24 - 10.10.11.0/24

Rene

1 Like
#54

Hi Rene,
What about the external Route Summarization when redistribution happend on NSSA area . Its produce LSA-7 . The same command “summary-address” on ASBR ?? Thx

br//zaman

1 Like
#55

Hello Mohammad

If you have a NSSA and you have a NSSA ASBR, then you can do route summarization for the redistribution into the NSSA area. It would still use the LSA type 7 to convey that information to the NSSA ABR which would then translate it to an LSA type 5 and propagate it to area 0 and beyond.

This is accomplished in the same manner with the summary-address command on the NSSA ASBR.

I hope this has been helpful!

Laz

#56

Dear rene
kindly ,related with summerization option in ospf ,if advertice summery route only when have specific router fall in summery address , why i use no discard-route internal command under ospf process ?

#57

Hello Saif

A summary will be advertised only if there is a subnet that is included within the summary. If that does not exist, then the summary route will not be installed, and no summary LSAs will be sent. Also, no Null0 route will be placed in the routing table. So in this case, the no discard-route internal command would be meaningless.

Now if you have a destination within the summary that has been configured, then a Null0 route will be installed in the routing table and summary LSAs will be sent. This is the normal operation.

Now if you want to remove the Null0 from the routing table, then in the second scenario you can do this with the no discard-route internal command as you mentioned.

An example of where this would be useful can be found in the following Cisco Support community post:

I hope this has been helpful!

Laz

#58

hello lagapides

thanks for your feedback ,your clearfication is helpfull

1 Like
#59

Hi Rene/Laz

Quick question! Why don’t we summarize within an area?

#60

Hello sales2161

Simply put, we don’t summarize within an area because OSPF doesn’t support it. You can only summarize at an ABR between areas. Because OSPF is hierarchical and areas can be created, if an increased amount of summarization is really needed due to a large number of routing table entries, then the solution would be to create smaller areas. Because protocols like EIGRP are not hierarchical in nature, they are able to to improve scalability by summarizing at any EIGRP router in the topology.

I hope this has been helpful!

Laz

1 Like