A comparison between two routing protocols: OSPF and IS-IS

Abstract

A comparison is made of the open shortest path first (OSPF) and intermediate system-to-intermediate system (IS-IS) routing protocols in terms of their ability to route internet protocol (IP) traffic. Common characteristics of the two protocols are briefly indicated. The differences between the two are explored with respect to packet encoding, area partitions, level 2 partitions, injection of level 2 information, authentication, designated router election, link state packet propagation, synchronized parameter setting, and neighbor initialization.