OSPF options¶

Introduction¶

OSPF exposes many options that you can tweak with minirouter. This article covers the cost metric.

Topology¶

We will use the following simple topology:

vm config filesystem /root/uminirouterfs
vm config preinit /root/uminirouterfs/preinit
vm config networks a b
vm launch container routerA
vm config networks a c
vm launch container routerB
vm config networks b c
vm launch container routerC
router routerA interface 0 10.0.0.1/24
router routerA interface 1 10.0.1.1/24
router routerA route ospf 0 0
router routerA route ospf 0 1
router routerA commit
router routerB interface 0 10.0.0.2/24
router routerB interface 1 10.0.2.1/24
router routerB route ospf 0 0
router routerB route ospf 0 1
router routerB commit
router routerC interface 0 10.0.1.2/24
router routerC interface 1 10.0.2.2/24
router routerC route ospf 0 0
router routerC route ospf 0 1
router routerC commit
vm start all

OSPF costs¶

OSPF uses cost to determine which paths to route through. These costs are typically set using the inverse of the speed but can be overridden. We will change the cost to force different routes through the network.

Once the environment has launched, you can use traceroute through miniweb to see the path through the network:

// Connect to routerA via miniweb
/ # traceroute 10.0.2.1
traceroute to 10.0.2.1 (10.0.2.1), 30 hops max, 46 byte packets
 1  10.0.1.2 (10.0.1.2)  0.009 ms  0.005 ms  0.005 ms
 2  10.0.2.1 (10.0.2.1)  0.005 ms  0.005 ms  0.005 ms

In this environment, the path is A-C-B.

We can tweak the cost on the A-C edge for routerA using the following commands:

router routerA route ospf 0 1 cost 20
router routerA commit

The default cost is 10 so a cost of 20 changes the chosen route. After a few seconds, we can verify the new route:

// Connect to routerA via miniweb
/ # traceroute 10.0.2.1
traceroute to 10.0.2.1 (10.0.2.1), 30 hops max, 46 byte packets
 1  10.0.2.1 (10.0.2.1)  0.009 ms  0.005 ms  0.006 ms

Other OSPF options¶

There are many other interface options for OSPF which are primarily used to control properties of the OSPF communication between the routers. See the interface section here for more details.