Dynamic Hostname Exchange Mechanism for OSPF
RFC 5642
Network Working Group S. Venkata
Request for Comments: 5642 Google Inc.
Category: Standards Track S. Harwani
C. Pignataro
Cisco Systems
D. McPherson
Arbor Networks, Inc.
August 2009
Dynamic Hostname Exchange Mechanism for OSPF
Abstract
This document defines a new OSPF Router Information (RI) TLV that
allows OSPF routers to flood their hostname-to-Router-ID mapping
information across an OSPF network to provide a simple and dynamic
mechanism for routers running OSPF to learn about symbolic hostnames,
just like for routers running IS-IS. This mechanism is applicable to
both OSPFv2 and OSPFv3.
Status of This Memo
This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the
Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for
improvements. Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet
Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state
and status of this protocol. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
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Venkata, et al. Standards Track [Page 1]
RFC 5642 Dynamic Hostnames for OSPF August 2009
not be created outside the IETF Standards Process, except to format
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.1. Specification of Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Possible Solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.1. Dynamic Hostname TLV . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.1.1. Flooding Scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.1.2. Multiple OSPF Instances . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4. IPv6 Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
5. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
6. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
7. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
8. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
8.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
8.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1. Introduction
OSPF uses a 32-bit Router ID to uniquely represent and identify a
node in the network. For management and operational reasons, network
operators need to check the status of OSPF adjacencies, entries in
the routing table, and the content of the OSPF link state database.
When looking at diagnostic information, numerical representations of
Router IDs (e.g., dotted-decimal or hexadecimal representations) are
less clear to humans than symbolic names.
One way to overcome this problem is to define a hostname-to-Router-ID
mapping table on a router. This mapping can be used bidirectionally
(e.g., to find symbolic names for Router IDs and to find Router IDs
for symbolic names) or unidirectionally (e.g., to find symbolic
hostnames for Router IDs). Thus, every router has to maintain a
table with mappings between router names and Router IDs.
These tables need to contain all names and Router IDs of all routers
in the network. If these mapping tables are built by static
definitions, it can currently become a manual and tedious process in
operational networks; modifying these static mapping entries when
additions, deletions, or changes occur becomes a non-scalable process
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