IS-IS Levels & Relationships

IS-IS creates flooding boundaries logical by breaking the network into routing domain levels i.e. A level2 routing domain and multiple level1 routing domains. The single Level 2 routing domain could be analogous to OSPF Area0 and multiple Level 1 routing domains are analogous to other OSPF Areas. Basically, IS-IS has two layer hierarchy: Level-2 (the backbone) Level-1 (the areas)     This two layer hierarchy is achieved by dividing the routers (IS’s) into three types called L-1, L-2, L-1-2 IS’s. Level1 Router is analogous to OSPF Internal non-backbone router (Totally Stubby). It contains a level1 LSDB only and is responsible for only routing Read More …

A brief flashback of IS-IS – Part II

Hello PDU’s of IS-IS: IS-IS has three types of Hello PDUs: i. ESH (ES Hello – sent by ES to an IS) ii. ISH (IS Hello – sent by IS to an ES) iii. IIH (IS-IS Hello – sent between two ISs)     Routing Levels Level0: Used to locate end systems Level1: Routing within an area Level2: Backbone between areas Level3: Inter-AS routing     NSAP Addressing IS-IS uses the NSAP address for communication. Each router in IS-IS is identified with an ID called NET (Network Entity Title) same as Router ID which is NSAP address. Below is the NSAP addressing format: Read More …

A brief flashback of IS-IS – Part I

IS-IS is categorised under Link State type of protocols & it is based on Dijkstra Algorithm same as OSPF. Admin Distance defaults to 115 & metric is 10 for all type of links (contrast to OSPF which has different cost for different type of media). It was originally standardized by ISO in 1987 (ISO10589) which was later adopted for TCP/IP type of networks & was called as Integrated IS-IS under RFC1195 (1990). Integrated/Dual IS-IS supports IP Routing while original IS-IS only supported CLNP routing. It supports both ISO’s Connectionless-Mode Network Service (CLNS) and IP. IS-IS runs on Layer2 in contrast to OSPF which Read More …