OSPF

How it is used

Spelled out letter by letter. Engineers enable OSPF on interfaces, form neighbour relationships (adjacencies), design areas (area 0 is the backbone) and troubleshoot neighbours that get stuck. It is a link-state protocol and chooses paths by cost.

Example sentences

1. OSPF picked the slower path because nobody had adjusted the link costs.

2. The two routers aren't forming an OSPF adjacency; check that the area IDs match.

Common collocations

• OSPF area
• OSPF neighbour
• OSPF adjacency
• enable OSPF
• OSPF cost

Related terms

• routingThe process of choosing the path that traffic takes from one network to another, carried out by routers using routes that are either entered by hand or learned from other routers.
• BGPShort for Border Gateway Protocol: the routing protocol that networks on the internet use to exchange routes with each other, so that traffic can find its way between different operators and companies.
• routing tableA list stored in a router or host that shows which networks it knows about and where to send packets for each one, such as the next router or an outgoing interface.
• routerA device that connects different networks and decides, packet by packet, the best path for data to reach its destination, usually based on IP addresses.
• static routeA route that an engineer enters into a router by hand, telling it exactly where to send traffic for a particular network, instead of letting a routing protocol learn it.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

• OSPF · Networking & Telecommunications

More terms: APIs, Networking and Security

• API
• endpoint
• REST
• JSON
• status code
• payload
• authentication
• third-party
• SDK
• breaking change
• request
• response