2013 International Conference on Computational and Information Sciences

Simulation and Research of OSPFv3 Performance

1stChen Haihong, 2ndSun Xiaoling

College of Computer and Information Engineering
Chifeng University
Chifeng Inner Mongolia, China
chen_hai_hong@163.com

Abstract—OSPFv3 is an interior gateway routing protocol, simulation software, and is currently one of the industry's
which is widely used in IPV6 environment. It is the realization leading network technology development environment. It
of OSPFv2 for IPV4 in the IPV6 environment. They are the orients network research and design personnel, It can be
same in the basic principles. The paper uses the OPNET used for communication network, equipment, protocols and
network simulation software to simulate and analyze the applications, and it can simulation of large and complex
performance of OSPFv3, and found that both the convergence network.
period is the same roughly, the flow is concentrated in the first OPNET Modeler provides an integrated environment
few seconds. But they also have many different aspects, a for modeling simulation and analysis, and reduces the
change in the packet format, and the type of LSA. There is no
workload of programming and data analysis [3-5]. OPNET
address information in OSPFv3 and the main LSAs. Router
LSA is only 83% of OSPFv2. Router ID does not have any
Modeler has three layers model, discrete event driven,
practical significance. Although IPV6 address is 4 times the model base, communication based on data packet. The
IPV4 address, both are the same roughly in the memory and network simulation has been made more flexible and
running time. And there are many improvements. (Abstract) convenient.
This paper simulates OSPFv3 protocol, and analyses its
Keywords-OSPFv3; simulation; OPNET; OSPFv2 (key performance based on OPNET.
words)
A. topological structure
Set up the network topology structure as shown in
I. INTRODUCTION
Figure 1, the topology is divided into 3 areas. R1 and R2 are
OSPF is a routing protocol based on link state. It aimed shared Ethernet segments, R1ÿs priority is 5, the priority
for overcoming the shortcoming of RIP protocol, such as of the rest routers is 1; therefore the router R1 is DR, R2
only applicable to small and medium-sized network, the
and R3 belong to ABR.
maximum path length being 15, the slow convergence
speed, can’t carry out dynamic load balancing. OSPF uses
the Dijkstra algorithm, area support, suitable for large-scale
Area 0
complex network. It is the most widely used interior R1
gateway protocol.
OSPFv1 appeared in 1989, RFC 1131 is the first IETF
standard about OSPF. But it was replaced by RFC1247
soon, then made some revision, and stable OSPFv2 forms in
1998, this version is widely used by IPV4.
OSPF version 3 (OSPFv3) is the realization of OSPF R2 R3
protocol in IPV6 environment, which is designed to adapt to
changes in the IPV6 protocol. At present, OSPFv2 is
according to RFC 2328[1], OSPFv3 is according to RFC
2740[2], there are many differences from OSPFv2.
R5 R4
II. SIMULATION AND ANALYSIS
Area 1 Area 2
In the past, when the network researchers study current
network performance or design new network, they can rely Figure 1. Topology
solely on experience, theory. But now, with the increasing
of the network scale, the network topology is more
B. The performance analysis[6-13]
complex, this way is very difficult. However, if they build
the real network environment, the cost is too high, and Set simulated time is 10 minutes.
unstable network environment is not conducive to statistics I)Convergence and Traffic
and analysis of data. Global statistical properties of OSPF is selected, turn off
So network simulation technology emerges as the times OSPF Sim Efficiency, export interface address table.
require. OPNET is one of the mainstream network

978-0-7695-5004-6/13 $26.00 © 2013 IEEE 1902

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DOI 10.1109/ICCIS.2013.497
 In OSPFv2, Convergence activities started at 6s, ended
at 65s. The convergence period is about 59s.
Convergence activities of OSPFv3 are basically the
same as OSPFv2. Activity started at 6s, ended at 65s. The
convergence period is about 59s.
In OSPFv2, the flow blow up the first few seconds, peak
flow is 2800bps.
In OSPFv3, traffic statistics is basically the same as
OSPFv2, focus on the first few seconds, peak flow is
3800bps.
prefix to the link of the entire region. The Intra Area Prefix
Link LSA is used for the routing table calculation by using
the shortest path tree.
III) memory and run time
Although the IPV6 address is 4 times the IPV4 address,
but run time and memory usage of OSPFv3 and OSPFv2 is
similar, as shown in Figure 3; mainly because in OSPFv3,
the relevant information about the link address is stored in a
new type of Link LSA.

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Figure 3. Memory Usage

IV) routing table

In the routing table of OSPFv2, directly connected
subnet regards network address as the next hop address, not
Figure 2. Traffic statistics directly connected subnet is represented by IPV4 address of
the next hop router interface. While in the OSPFv3 routing
II)Link State Database table, in addition to link directly connected uses global
Set attributes of each router, access link state database, unicast address, the others use link local address as the next
in the same topological structure, run OSPFv2 and OSPFv3 hop.
respectively. The result of link state database is different. In
OSPFv3, two new LSAs Intra Area Prefix Links LSA and
Links LSA have been added. In LSAs of OSPFv3, Inter
Area Prefix Links LSA is equivalent to Network Summary
LSA of OSPFv2, Inter Area Router LSA is equivalent to
ASBR Summary LSA of OSPFv2. Number of LSAs is
about two times that of OSPFv2.
Comparative analysis of Router Link LSDB in router
R4, Router links LSA no longer contain network address in
the OSPFv3, but simply express network topology
information. Therefore, although the IPV6 address is 4
times the IPV4 address, but Router links LSA is only 83%
of OSPFv2.
Link local address appears in the Link LSA, the rest
LSAs have not one.
The Intra Area Prefix Link LSA is used to provide the
address information, this kind of LSA spreads in the area. It
has one of the following two functions: associate the IPv6
address prefix and transit network by referencing the
Network LSA; or associate the IPv6 address prefix and
router by referencing the Router LSA. A router can
originate multiple this type LSAs within a single area, these Figure 4. route table.size(number of entries)
LSA use the link state ID field to distinguish. DR produces
one or more of the type of LSA for their links, advertises V˅SPF algorithm

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 The IPv6 OSPF routing calculation proceeds along the
same lines as the IPv4 OSPF routing calculation, following
the five steps specified by OSPFv2.
VI) Node failure
When the run time is 200s, link between the router R2
and router R5 is bad, then the total number of router R4
updates as shown in figure 5.
Figure 5. total number of updates
VII) load balancing
OSPFv2 and OSPFv3 have the function of load
balancing based on packet.
III. SUMMARY
The fundamental mechanisms of OSPFv3 remain
unchanged, such as the basic operation process, area
support, DR election, flooding, SPF calculation, etc. But in
order to meet the special needs of IPV6, great changes have
taken place in terms, packet format, packet types and
corresponding processing.
OSPFv3 runs on a per-link basis, instead of on a per-IP-
subnet basis.
Address information are not present in OSPFv3. Router
LSAs and Network LSAs no longer contain any network
address information, but simply express topology
information.
OSPFv3 also introduces link LSA and Intra Area Prefix
Link LSA.
Link state ID does not contain address information in
LSA head, OSPFv3 packets’ source and destination address
is not showed by global unicast address.
Router ID does not have any meaning, it only uses to
uniquely identify a router in the network, the length is 32
bits, no longer confers IPv6 address.
Router IDs, Area IDs, LSA Link State IDs are used only
for identification, retain IPV4 format, still 32 bits.
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Neighbor router is only found by router ID, instead of
the router address.
In OSPFv3, authentication has been removed from
OSPF itself. The "AuType" and "Authentication" fields
have been removed from the OSPF packet header, and all
authentication related fields have been removed from the
OSPF area and interface structures. When running over
IPv6, OSPF relies on the IP Authentication Header and the
IP Encapsulating Security Payload to ensure integrity and
authentication/confidentiality of routing exchanges.
In addition to the above differences, OSPFv3 can also
support in a single link running multiple protocol instances,
mainly through contains an instance number (Instance ID)
in the OSPF header and OSPF interface data structure to
realize. Instance number only affects the OSPF message
receiving.
OSPFv3’s new features simplify the network equipment
and operation. It has been already widely used in deployed
IPV6 network. When the IPV6 massively applies in the
global scope, OSPFv3 will be one of the most used interior
gateway protocols.
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REMARK
This paper is supported by Natural Science Fundation of Inner
Mongolia Autonomous Region education department, No. NJzy12308.