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How To Configure OSPF Summarization

OSPF can summarize inter-area (type 3) and external (type 5) routes using route summarization. Summarization must be configured on the area border router (ABR) for inter-area routes and on the autonomous system boundary router (ASBR) for external routes. Configuring summarization reduces the number of LSAs that must be flooded throughout the routing domain and prevents routing tables from growing too large.

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50 views

How To Configure OSPF Summarization

OSPF can summarize inter-area (type 3) and external (type 5) routes using route summarization. Summarization must be configured on the area border router (ABR) for inter-area routes and on the autonomous system boundary router (ASBR) for external routes. Configuring summarization reduces the number of LSAs that must be flooded throughout the routing domain and prevents routing tables from growing too large.

Uploaded by

zakia osmani
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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How to configure OSPF Summarization

If you are studying OSPF you will learn that OSPF uses LSA type 3 for inter-area
routers and LSA type 5 for external prefixes that are redistributed into OSPF.

OSPF can do summarization but it’s impossible to summarize within an area. This


means we have to configure summarization on an ABR or ASBR. OSPF can only
summarize our LSA type 3 and 5.
If you want summarization for OSPF you will have to configure it yourself. I will show
you how to do this for inter-area prefixes and external prefixes. Let’s start with an
example:

Look at the topology above. If we don’t use summarization (which is the default) there
will be a LSA for every specific prefix. If we have a link failure in area 1 then R1 (our
ABR) will flood a new type 3 summary LSA and this change has to be propagated
throughout all our OSPF areas. Since the LSDB will change our OSPF routers they will
have to re-run the SPF algorithm which takes time and CPU power.
If we use summarization things will be different. I can create a summary on R1 to
summarize the different type 3 summary LSAs. Instead of sending a LSA for 4.4.4.0 /24
and 4.5.5.0 /24 I could send 4.0.0.0 /8 or something alike.

If a link failure occurs in area 1 nothing will change for area 0 and area 2 since they
don’t have the specific 4.4.4.0 /24 prefix in their LSDB but the 4.0.0.0 /8 summary.
Nothing will change in their LSDB so we don’t have to re-run the SPF algorithm.

Summarization of type 3 summary LSAs means we are creating a summary of all the
interarea routes. This is why we call it interarea route summarization. There are a
couple of things to be aware of:
 A summary route will only be advertised if you have at least one subnet that falls within the
summary range.
 A summary route will have the cost of the subnet with the lowest cost that falls within the
summary range.
 Your ABR that creates the summary route will create a null0 interface to prevent loops.
 OSPF is a classless routing protocol so you can pick any subnet mask you like for prefixes.
If you look at my picture you can see that 4.4.4.0 /24 and 4.5.5.0 /24 both fall within the
4.0.0.0 /8 summary. If we have a link failure for the 4.4.4.0 /24 prefix we will still
advertise the summary. If 4.5.5.0 /24 would fail as well then the summary will be
withdrawn since there is no subnet left that falls within the 4.0.0.0 /8 range.

Enough theory let’s take a look at the configuration of inter-area summarization. This is
the topology we’ll use:

I’m going to show you an example of interarea route summarization. I’m going to use
routers R1 and R2. R1 will have 4 loopback interfaces which are in area 0. The link
between R1 and R2 is in area 1 which turns R1 into an ABR that can do summarization.
R1(config)#router ospf 1
R1(config-router)#network 172.16.0.0 0.0.3.255 area 0
R1(config-router)#network 192.168.12.0 0.0.0.255 area 1
R2(config)#router ospf 1
R2(config-router)#network 192.168.12.0 0.0.0.255 area 1

Here are the network commands I used to advertise all subnets.

R2#show ip route ospf


172.16.0.0/32 is subnetted, 4 subnets
O IA 172.16.1.1 [110/2] via 192.168.12.1, 00:08:04,
FastEthernet0/0
O IA 172.16.0.1 [110/2] via 192.168.12.1, 00:08:04,
FastEthernet0/0
O IA 172.16.3.1 [110/2] via 192.168.12.1, 00:08:04,
FastEthernet0/0
O IA 172.16.2.1 [110/2] via 192.168.12.1, 00:08:04,
FastEthernet0/0
R2#show ip ospf database | begin Summary
Summary Net Link States (Area 1)

Link ID ADV Router Age Seq# Checksum


172.16.0.1 172.16.3.1 542 0x80000003 0x005269
172.16.1.1 172.16.3.1 542 0x80000003 0x004773
172.16.2.1 172.16.3.1 542 0x80000003 0x003C7D
172.16.3.1 172.16.3.1 542 0x80000003 0x003187

Above you see the LSDB and routing table of R2. You can see there are 4 LSAs for
each of the prefixes.

R1(config)#router ospf 1
R1(config-router)#area 0 range 172.16.0.0 255.255.0.0

By using the area range command we can summarize the type 3 summary LSAs. In my
example I’m creating the summary 172.16.0.0 /16. To keep things interesting you need
to type in a subnet mask for the summary instead of a wildcard for the network
command.

R2#show ip route ospf


O IA 172.16.0.0/16 [110/2] via 192.168.12.1, 00:03:26,
FastEthernet0/0
R2#show ip ospf database | begin Summary
Summary Net Link States (Area 1)
Link ID ADV Router Age Seq# Checksum
172.16.0.0 172.16.3.1 219 0x80000001 0x00605E

Once again the LSDB and routing table of R2. Instead of 4x type 3 summary LSA we
now have just a single LSA. You can see there is only the 172.16.0.0 /16 entry in the
routing table.

So far so good? Excellent! One more thing we can do with OSPF and summarization
which is external route summarization. This is where we summarize the type 5 external
LSAs. Two things to keep in mind:
 You can create the summary only on the ASBR.
 A null0 entry will be created in the routing table for the summary route.
This is the topology I will use to demonstrate this:

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

R1(config)#router ospf 1
R1(config-router)#no network 172.16.0.0 0.0.3.255 area 0
R1(config-router)#redistribute connected subnets

We’ll remove the network command for the interfaces and redistribute the loopback
interfaces into OSPF.

R2#show ip route ospf


172.16.0.0/24 is subnetted, 4 subnets
O E2 172.16.0.0 [110/20] via 192.168.12.1, 00:01:07,
FastEthernet0/0
O E2 172.16.1.0 [110/20] via 192.168.12.1, 00:01:07,
FastEthernet0/0
O E2 172.16.2.0 [110/20] via 192.168.12.1, 00:01:07,
FastEthernet0/0
O E2 172.16.3.0 [110/20] via 192.168.12.1, 00:01:07,
FastEthernet0/0
R2#show ip ospf database | begin Type-5
Type-5 AS External Link States

Link ID ADV Router Age Seq# Checksum Tag


172.16.0.0 172.16.3.1 91 0x80000001 0x00B46E 0
172.16.1.0 172.16.3.1 91 0x80000001 0x00A978 0
172.16.2.0 172.16.3.1 91 0x80000001 0x009E82 0
172.16.3.0 172.16.3.1 91 0x80000001 0x00938C 0

Here is the LSDB and routing table of R2. As you can see we have type 5 external
LSAs and they show up as O E2 entries in the routing table.

R1(config)#router ospf 1
R1(config-router)#summary-address 172.16.0.0 255.255.0.0

This is how you summarize the type 5 external LSAs by using the summary-address
command. This is a different command compared to summarizing the type 3 summary
LSAs.

R2#show ip route ospf


O E2 172.16.0.0/16 [110/20] via 192.168.12.1, 00:00:17,
FastEthernet0/0
R2#show ip ospf database | begin Type-5
Type-5 AS External Link States

Link ID ADV Router Age Seq# Checksum Tag


172.16.0.0 172.16.3.1 38 0x80000002 0x00B26F 0

This is what the LSDB and routing table of R2 looks like after the summarization. That’s
all I wanted to show you about OSPF summarization.

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