OSPF-TE

Standardized by IETF in 1998, OSPF protocol is a link-state routing protocol designed to be run internally to a single Autonomous System. Each OSPF router maintains an identical database describing the Autonomous System's topology. From this database, a routing table is calculated by constructing a shortest- path tree. Efficient, it has replaced RIPv2 and is now largely deployed in IP infrastructure to decrease routing provisioning cost.

OSPF recalculates routes quickly in the face of topological changes, minimizing overhead of routing protocol traffic. OSPF provides support for equal-cost multipath. An area routing capability is provided, enabling an additional level of routing protection and a reduction in routing protocol traffic.

OSPF has been elected for MPLS and GMPLS to build Traffic engineering functions using opaque Link state Advertisement (see RFC 4202 and RFC 4202).

MARBEN OSPF-TE

MARBEN OSPF-TE has been designed to provide the simplest interface that hides OSPF protocol mechanisms to the user of the MARBEN Networking Protocols stack. Indeed, MARBEN OSPF-TE fully handles:

• OSPF adjacency auto-discovery;
• Path computation with shortest path first algorithm;
• IP routing table update;
• OSPF Graceful Restart;
• Support of NSSA;
• Support of Opaque LSA.

MARBEN OSPF-TE entity provides a service for the management of opaque LSA. This service allows sending opaque LSA information received from the network to the application on top of OSPF and also allows this application to send proprietary formatted information that will be sent to the network through opaque LSA.