International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering

Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 2, Issue 12, December 2012)

Evaluation And Implementation Of The Open Shortest Path

First (OSPF) Routing Protocol
1, 2, 3,4

G.C NWALOZIE1, V.N OKOROGU2, A.C OKAFOR3, A.O UMEH4

Electronic and Computer Engineering Department, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka.
There are three routing protocols commonly associated
with IP and the Internet, namely, RIP, OSPF, and BGP [1,
2]. OSPF and RIP are primarily used to provide routing
within a particular domain, such as within a corporate
network or within an ISP's network. Since the routing is
inside of the domain, these protocols are generically
referred to as interior gateways protocols.
The Routing Information Protocol version 2 (RIP-2),
described in RFC 2453, describes how routers will
exchange routing table information using a distance-vector
algorithm. With RIP, neighbouring routers periodically
exchange their entire routing tables. RIP uses hop count as
the metric of a path's cost, and a path is limited to 16 hops.
Unfortunately, RIP has become increasingly inefficient on
the Internet as the network continues its fast rate of growth.
The Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) protocol is a link
state routing algorithm that is more robust than RIP,
converges faster, requires less network bandwidth, and is
better able to scale to larger networks [3]. With OSPF, a
router broadcasts only changes in its links' status rather
than entire routing tables. OSPF Version 2, described in
RFC 1583, is rapidly replacing RIP in the Internet.
Fort and Thorup [4, 5] used weight of the link. Traffic is
routed along shortest paths to the destination. The authors
described the heuristic for the no-failure case can be
adapted to take into account failure scenarios. Their
objective is to optimize network parameters with respect to
a robustness objective function that requires the evaluation
of all possible link failure scenarios.
C.C. Gallacio [6] analysed the optimization of Wide
Area Network (WAN) .His main goal is to increase
network application performance by decreasing the
response time. WAN optimization is about saving time, not
bandwidth (although this is a side-effect). WAN
optimization can be configured in a non-intrusive manner,
allowing your organizations existing QoS and firewall
policies to remain in place (no major changes required).
In [7] Labovitz et al, have studied the impact of delayed
routing convergence on connectivity, packet loss and
latency. Measurements were taken by injecting path
failures into the network using ICMP echo (ping) packets
sent to a set of websites beginning 10 minutes before the
path failure event.

Abstract-- The Open-Shortest Path First (OSPF) protocol,

due to its enviable properties is at the top of the pecking order
of routing-protocol solutions as a result of the fact that it
provides a better pick of priorities in calculations of its link
(bandwidth and delay), better scalability than rival protocols
and a reasonable convergence time (which is critical when
assessing protocols by merit). This research is aimed at
advocating for a particular solution in the midst of other
known solutions (protocols), by proving literally and by
practical-oriented means why the chosen solution should be
embraced and also shedding light on the vital properties of the
chosen solution (protocol) and how it could be used with the
help of OPNET IT GURU to optimize a Data Network.
Keyword-- Internet Protocol, Routing, Routing protocol
and Algorithms

I.

INTRODUCTION

The first internet protocol (IP) networks were used for

military or research applications. Mostly static routes were
used and routing protocols were based on distance vector
algorithms, such as Routing Information Protocol (RIP).
There was little concern for IP address depletion or IP
address summarization. There was no hierarchy in the
routing protocol. Reliability of the physical layer was not
hidden and its flapping disrupted in the network.
Applications were text-based and not delay-sensitive and a
single autonomous domain managed the network [1, 2].
The IP networks of today carry mostly commercial
traffic. Multimedia applications used today are very delaysensitive and hence, routing protocols must provide
stability, and security, and converge quickly. Today, the
Internet is divided into many autonomous systems or
domains. Each domain uses its own internal routing
protocol. The IP routing protocols in each domain must be
carefully designed in order to build a stable and scalable
network. Physical instabilities and IP address planning and
summarization both inside and between autonomous
domains must be taken into account.
As an OSI Network Layer protocol, IP has the
responsibility to route packets. It performs this function by
looking up a packet's destination IP Network ID in a
routing table and forwarding based on the information in
the table. But it is routing protocols, and not IP, that
populate the routing tables with routing information.

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International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering

Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 2, Issue 12, December 2012)
They found that convergence times in inter-domain
routing are on the order of minutes, and that end-to-end
loss and latency increase significantly during convergence.
This work, analyzes the logical description in
dissemination of packets in a network, its implementation
(virtually on a router) and its mathematical workability all
aimed at improving routing in networks by avoiding
routing loops of all kinds in these networks.
II.

A dynamic routing protocol learns all available routes,

places the best routes into the routing table, and removes
routes when they are no longer valid. The method that a
routing protocol uses to determine the best route to a
destination network is called a routing algorithm.
There are two main classes of routing algorithms;
distance vector and link state. Each type uses a different
method for determining the best route to a destination
network.
The routing algorithm is very important to dynamic
routing. Whenever the topology of a network changes
because of reconfiguration or failure, the routing tables in
all the routers must also change to reflect an accurate view
of the new topology. When all the routers in a network
have updated their tables to reflect the new route, the
routers are said to have converged. In order for two routers
to exchange routes, they must be using the same routing
protocol and therefore the same routing algorithm.

T HE NEED FOR ROUTING P ROTOCOLS

Routes can change very quickly. Problems with cables

and hardware failures can make destinations unreachable
through the designated interface. Routers need a way to
quickly update routes that does not depend on the
administrator to make changes. Routers use routing
protocols to dynamically manage information received
from their own interfaces and from other routers. Routing
protocols can also be configured to manage manually
entered routes [3] [7].

III.

AN OVERVIEW O F OPEN SHORTEST P ATH F IRST

(OSPF)

Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) is a link-state routing

protocol that was developed as a replacement for the
distance vector routing protocol RIP. RIP was an
acceptable routing protocol in the early days of networking
and the Internet, but its reliance on hop count as the only
measure for choosing the best route quickly became
unacceptable in larger networks that needed a more robust
routing solution. OSPF is a classless routing protocol that
uses the concept of areas for scalability. RFC 2328 defines
the OSPF metric as an arbitrary value called cost. The
Cisco IOS uses bandwidth as the OSPF cost metric. OSPF's
major advantages over RIP are its fast convergence, its
scalability to much larger network implementations and its
ability to choose the past with the lowest route cost [5]
[10].

Fig 1 How routing tables of routers are been updated by a routing

protocol

Fig 1 shows two routers, lets says router A and router B

connected to two different networks with different IP
address, 10.10.1.0 and 10.20.1.0 respectively. Router A
uses routing protocol to informs router B that it is
connected to a Network 10.10.1.0 while Router B tells
Router of Network 10.20.1.0. They do this by updating
their respective routing tables.
Dynamic routing protocols are usually used in larger
networks to ease the administrative and operational
overhead of using only static routes. Dynamic routing
makes it possible to avoid the time-consuming and exacting
process of configuring static routes. Dynamic routing
enables routers to react to changes in the networks and to
adjust their routing tables accordingly, without the
intervention of the network administrator.

Electing A DR and BDR

To reduce the amount of OSPF traffic on multi access
networks, OSPF elects a Designated Router (DR) and
Backup Designated Router (BDR). The DR is responsible
for updating all other OSPF routers (called DR Others)
when a change occurs in the multi access network. The
BDR monitors the DR and takes over as DR if the current
DR fails. In figure 2, R1, R2, and R3 are connected
through point-to-point links. Therefore, no DR/BDR
election occurs [3].

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International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering

Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 2, Issue 12, December 2012)

Fig 2 shows how the hello protocol is sent between three routers

Ospf Link-State Updates

Link-state updates (LSUs) are the packets used for OSPF
routing updates. An LSU packet can contain 11 different
types of Link-State Advertisements (LSAs), as shown in
the figure. The difference between the terms Link-State
Update (LSU) and Link-State Advertisement (LSA) can
sometimes be confusing. At times, these terms are used
interchangeably. An LSU contains one or more LSAs and
either term can be used to refer to link-state information
propagated by OSPF routers [7] [11].

Fig 3. Dijkstra's Shortest Path First (SPF) Algorithm

IV.

S IMULATION IMPLEMENTATION AND EVALUATION

For a Data network to perform optimally the problem of

Routing loop caused by inconsistent routing table must be
tackled so that the network can converge to deliver packets
faster and reliably. If the routing configurations of the
nodes are correct and the network converges, then it is
expected each router has a correct topological view of the
network. This work focuses on the principles governing
information exchange between nodes in a network and
optimization of a data network using the right routing
protocol. It invokes key terms such as throughput,
reliability, IP traffic dropped, bandwidth and delay (cost)
along links.

OSPF Algorithm
Each OSPF router maintains a link-state database
containing the LSAs received from all other routers. Once a
router has received all of LSAs and built its local link-state
database, OSPF uses Dijkstra's shortest path first (SPF)
algorithm to create an SPF tree. The SPF tree is then used
to populate the IP routing table with the best paths to each
network [3] [12].

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International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering

Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 2, Issue 12, December 2012)
Description of the actual configuration of the network is
described using the OPNET IT GURU 9.1 simulator, which
creates a virtual scenario of the modelled network. The
mathematical viability of the action of the preferred
protocol is tested by simulations on the MATLAB
simulator and the results presented and analyzed.

The traffic loads correspond to packets transmitted from

node_0 to node_13 (since time 250 sec until time 20
minutes, with mean interpackets transmitted from node_11 to node_15 (since time
180 sec until time 20 minutes, with mean inter-arrival time
according to Tables 1, 2 and 3.
The scenarios 1a, 2a and 3a correspond to the
simulations under the adaptive routing strategy (OSPF)
while the scenarios 1c, 2c and 3c correspond to the
simulations under the conventional routing strategy (RIP)
submitted to the packet mean sizes defined in Tables 1, 2
and 3 respectively.

Using Opnet in Simulating the Performance a Data

Network
A sample data network is given below that was
configured in the OPNET IT GURU. The metrics used in
this analysis are throughput, delay and IP traffic dropped of
the data network designed below. In this module we
present our simulation results for an example network
topology illustrated in Figure 4. This period value was
adopted by the fact that the OSPF module verifies its
routing table for recalculation every 60 seconds [12]

Table i
Packet Mean Sizes Small traffic Condition (1)

Source
Router

Packet

Mean Destination Router

Size(bytes)

node_0

100

node_13
120

node_11

node_15

Table ii
Packet Mean Sizes Medium Traffic Condition (2)

Source Router

Packet

Mean

Destination

Size (bytes)

Router

node_0

180

node_13

node_11

220

node_15

Table iii
Packet Mean Sizes Large Traffic Condition (3)

Source
Router
Figure 4: Example Network Topology

Three different traffic loads were analyzed. This implies

six different simulation scenarios (varying the traffic load
and the routing strategy chosen).

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Packet

Mean

Destination

Size(bytes)

Router

node_0

300

node_13

node_11

280

node_15

International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering

Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 2, Issue 12, December 2012)
Table 1 shows a low traffic network condition, while
Table ii shows a medium traffic network condition and
Table iii shows a high traffic network condition.
Performance Enhancement Using
Temporary Ordered Routing Algorithm (TORA) is a
distributed routing protocol based on link reversal
algorithm that finds and maintains routes via local
relaxation of link direction. It is designed to discover routes
on demand, provide multiple routes to a destination,
establish routes quickly, and minimize communication
overhead by localizing algorithmic reaction to topology
changes when possible. Route optimality (shortest-path
routing) is considered of primary importance. TORA is
used to further validate the assessments done on MATLAB.
V.

S IMULATION RESULTS

Figures 5, 6 and 7 show the results for the six scenarios

above described. In terms of network throughput (Fig 5),
we can evaluate the network traffic distribution through the
network. Routing strategies that better distribute traffic
through the network offer higher network throughput. More
specifically for the scenarios above described, Figure 5
shows better network throughput achieved by using the
adaptive strategy; that is, Scenarios 1a, 2a and 3a (the
adaptive routing) present better throughput than scenarios
1c, 2c and 3c (the conventional routing) respectively. These
results can be explained by the fact that the adaptive
routing strategy is able to select best routes that change (or
oscillate) occasioning in better link utilizations and
therefore, better average throughput.

Fig 5 Network Throughput (packets/sec) in function of time

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International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering

Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 2, Issue 12, December 2012)
And considering the results of network delay presented
for these two scenarios (1a and 1c), we can conclude that
the adaptive routing wasnt a good idea in this case. On the
other hand, analyzing the results of scenarios 2a, 2c, 3a and
3c, we can observe that the traffic drop rates didnt present
so much different when comparing the adaptive and the
conventional routing approaches. Mostly important,
scenarios 2a and 3a presented good increase in network
throughput and decrease in network delay when compared
with scenarios 2c and 3c respectively. Finally, network
performance results are useful to understand the updating
messages overloads and to evaluate the efficiency of an
adaptive routing strategy for a particular network topology
submitted to a network traffic range.

Fig 6 Network Delay (sec) in function of time

In terms of network delay (Figure 6), we can evaluate

the overload introduced by the adaptive routing updating
messages. Updating messages fill buffers and could lead to
greater delay if sent without restrictions. Results of network
delay help the evaluation of these restrictions and of the
adaptive approach efficiency.
In particularly, we found that the adaptive routing
strategy in scenarios 2a and 3a presented smaller transfer
delays than scenarios 2c and 3c respectively. On the other
hand, for the scenario 1a the adaptive routing strategy
causes larger transfer delay than scenario 1c. These results
can be explained by the fact that choosing the best routes
according to the link conditions take advantage of
forwarding packets through less loaded paths and therefore
suffer less transmission delay measurements (like scenarios
2a and 3a). In addition, we found that adaptive strategies
are better choices for networks under heavy input traffic
loads. Under low input traffic loads the overhead
introduced by the updating messages may increase the
delay (like scenario 1a).
Intuitively the updating messages introduced by adaptive
routing may increase the traffic drop rate. In Figure 7, we
can observe that for scenario 1a the traffic drop rate was so
much greater than scenario 1c.

Figure 7: Network Traffic Dropped (packets/sec) in function of Time

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International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering

Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 2, Issue 12, December 2012)
Analysis of TORA Results
As previously stated, TORA [10] is used to determine
the most efficient (shortest-path) route to a particular
destination, hence optimality is the keyword here. The most
efficient routes are calculated using node 1 as our
reference.

VI.

CONCLUSION

The entire work on this research has been on the

performance evaluation, and the implementation of the
Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) Routing Protocol for data
network. Some deductions have been made about the
conventional routing protocol (RIP) and its optimized
model. This research area is still very open to all interested
researchers because of the continuous increase in the size
of the internet and there will always be a need for a routing
protocol that will route packets faster and more reliably.
This research has shown that OSPF can be used to optimise
the performance metrics (like throughput, delay and IP
traffic dropped) of a data network due to its use of Djisktra
Algorithm to find the smallest route cost (shortest path) to a
destination network.
REFERENCES
[1 ] Todd Lammle, 2000 Cisco Certified Network Associate Study
Guide, Second Edition. .
[2 ] W. Ben-Ameur, N. Michel, E. Gourdin, and B.
Liau.
2001
Routing strategies for IP networks. T elektronikk, 2/3:145158.
[3 ] B. Fortz and M. Thorup. 2000 Increasing
internet capacity using
local search. Technical Report IS-MG 2000/21, Universite Libre
de Bruxelle.
[4 ] B. Fortz and M. Thorup. 2000. Internet traffic engineering by SPF
weights. In Proc. 19th IEEE
Conf. on cations (INFOCOM),
pages 519528.
[5 ] B. Fortz and M. Thorup. 2002 Optimizing OSPF/IS-IS weights in
a changing world. IEEE Journal on Selected Areas
in
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[6 ] C.C. Gallaci, 2005: WAN Optimization. Addison-Wesley.
[7 ] C. Labovitz, A. Ahuja, A. Bose, and F. Jahanian, 2000 Delayed
Internet Routing Convergence. InProc. ACM SIGCOMM, pages
175187,Sweden,
[8 ] D. Awduche, A. Chiu, A. Elwalid, I. Widjaja, and X. Xiaro. 2000.
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[9 ] M. Pioro, A. Szentesi, J. Harmatos, A. Juttner, P. Gajowniczek,
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[10 ] R. Callon. 2000 Use of OSI IS-IS for routing in TCP/IP and dual
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[11 ] M.A. Rodrigues and K.G. Ramakrishnan.1994 Optimal routing
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[12 ] OSPF Optimized Multipath (OSPF- OMP) IETF Internet
Draft
Feb 1999

Figure 8 TORA GUI showing the optimal path to a destination

network

The calculation of the most optimal routes begin at

iteration 1 and is stretched to iteration 6 when the best path
to every network has been calculated and the nodes
established as permanent. In generating the most optimal
route to a destination, all routes are initially considered as
temporary, and when the most trusted route to the
destination is detected, it is declared as a permanent route,
while others remain temporary.
It is important to note that in the case of any node going
down, each router recalculates its OSPF tree, which is its
routing map to every destination on the network.

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