OSPF how common

Folks:
Right now i am pushing through the OSPF topics, and I am having some difficult time remembering and understanding all the different topics; however, this section really interests me. How common is OSPF? I am not sure, but it looks like an Open Standard - were EIGRP is Cisco proprietary.

Thank you,
E

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Comments

accely

Yes OSPF is open standard and EIGRP is Cisco proprietary. As for how common OSPF is.... I'll leave that for someone else to answer.

shednik

I work for a fortune 500 company we run it all over the globe for our corporate network. We have a few networks running eigrp but the majority of our network is run off of OSPF even though we are primary a cisco shop. OSPF does much better in larger scale networks IMO.

redwarrior

All the networks I've worked on used OSPF for internal routing and BGP on their external routers. I just think it scales better.

Forsaken_GA

OSPF is pretty common. EIGRP still suffers from the stigma of being proprietary. So even if you're a 100% Cisco shop, you have to keep in mind that may not always be the case (especially since Juniper and Force10 have some very robust offerings these days). It's pretty rare to be able to design a network from the ground up these days, so you'll usually be stuck with whatever was implemented, unless you manage to effect a changeover. But if I were designing a network from scratch, I wouldn't use EIGRP at all.

I personally prefer IS-IS over OSPF for an IGP (OSPF's 'everything connects back to area 0' requirement annoys me)

rossonieri#1

could not disagree with the other posters

especially forsaken's post.

kryolla

we use OSPF here in the datacenter as we have Cisco for the core and other vendors on the edge

mikearama

I've worked in three cisco shops... all EIGRP only. I haven't experienced any stigma of using a proprietary protocol when all of the gear came from the same proprietor.

I worked in one heterogenous shop... it ran OSPF. Which makes sense, since EIGRP can't work with juniper and nortel gear. I'll tell you this, though... a constant conversation was entertained by our network manager and CIO to replace all gear with a cisco product, and I know that if that ever happened, EIGRP would have gotten the nod.

And your network would have to be friggin huge for the scalability factors between EIGRP and OSPF to come into play. *shrug* Guess my gigs have been a fair size in nature, but not monumental.

empc4000xl

I work at a provider and the smaller customers with a few sites use EIGRP, the much larger customers use OSPF. Depending on the network and skill of the people will determine what you should use.

Forsaken_GA

mikearama wrote: »

I've worked in three cisco shops... all EIGRP only. I haven't experienced any stigma of using a proprietary protocol when all of the gear came from the same proprietor.

Well, that's just it. Not all shops stick with one vendor, and unless I knew I was vendor locked with no chance at all of another vendor's gear entering my network, I don't think I could implement a proprietary protocol. That'd just be creating more work for myself down the road. It's a moot point for me in my current job though, as we have a mix of Force10 gear and Cisco, so EIGRP is simply not an option.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking EIGRP, I think it's operation is pretty cool.

mikearama

Forsaken_GA wrote: »

Well, that's just it. Not all shops stick with one vendor, and unless I knew I was vendor locked with no chance at all of another vendor's gear entering my network...

Ah, but other vendor's gear can enter the network... just not anything that runs a dynamic routing protocol.

We run a couple Nokia firewalls, two pairs of NetScalers, and still have several Nortel BPS switches... none of which run a dynamic protocol, and so interacts nicely in what we still call a "cisco-shop". Only the routers, of necessity, MUST be Cisco products... which causes me no grief whatsoever.

Forsaken_GA

mikearama wrote: »

Ah, but other vendor's gear can enter the network... just not anything that runs a dynamic routing protocol.

We run a couple Nokia firewalls, two pairs of NetScalers, and still have several Nortel BPS switches... none of which run a dynamic protocol, and so interacts nicely in what we still call a "cisco-shop". Only the routers, of necessity, MUST be Cisco products... which causes me no grief whatsoever.

Well, sure, EIGRP obviously doesn't effect any network gear that doesn't actually do any routing.

Ok, so I guess the best way to sum it all up is that it's a bad idea to forgo learning EIGRP in favor of OSPF and vice versa, because you're going to be at the mercy of whatever the original designer of the network implemented, whether it was because of a personal preference, vendor selection, astrological alignment accompanied by virginal sacrifice, or whatever.

Learn 'em both, and if you absolutely hate what you're stuck with, work on acquiring the juice within the company to move over to what you want.

Sepiraph

Well OSPF is used in the several MANs that we manage, for satellite site ripv2 suffice. I am not aware that we use any EIGRP even though we use all Cisco stuffs (except the P & PE routers). As I recall EIGRP doesn't scale as well as either OSPF or ISIS so for very large MANs, OSPF or ISIS is your only option.

e24ohm

Folks:
Want to thank you for your time, and all of the posts. This really helps me - I know i need to learn the material, but (wow...is it boring to me). Can't wait to move job positions and get a hands-on experience with all of this technology.

Thanks again...all of you.