Does anyone here actually make use of the different OSPF stubby area types?

CodeBlox

I understand how they work but I am thinking of different scenarios and I can't think of when it'd be necessary. I am thinking of how they could be of use on our network at our shop which probably isn't very large (about 500 routes). Perhaps they have no place on our network. I suppose I could put every branch in a totally stubby area and be done with it :P. This isn't something I was tasked with but I am just curios about this. How have you all made practical use of the stubby area types?

networker050184

I've seen them used a quite a few times, but usually unnecessarily. I've seen people do exactly what you described. All areas as NSSA. If you have to find a reason to use them then you probably don't need them!

Stubs and totally stubby areas can reduce your routing tables obviously, but your modern routing platform isn't going to have any trouble churning through 500+ routes with ease. Smaller routing tables are never a bad thing though if you don't have a need for specific next-hops in a routing table. I always prefer to keep things as simple as possible though.

DevilWAH

Kind of the same, I find in the size of networks I use that summarization has been the most I have needed to do to reduce the routing table, and thats only for my sanity, not due to router resources.

If you had a network with a lot of routes going up and down I suppose you might have a reason also to think about stubby areas as it does of course reduce the amount of updates going around during topology changes. But again most routers will happily deal with the kind of traffic you could expect to see on a network with 500 routes.

when ever you read about these technologies its always that not using them can increase the routers resource utilisation. So if your router is humming along happy at 15% utilisation then no need for it. However if its hitting 70% all the time due to 10,000's of routes, then creating some stubby areas might well claw some back.

I am with networker, if you need to find a reason to use some thing, then chances are you don't really need it. I find keeping things simple for me, more often than not is in line with keeping the network efficient.