OSPF vs IS-IS

Paul paul at paulgraydon.co.uk
Wed Aug 17 00:19:22 UTC 2011


On 08/16/2011 12:55 PM, Tomas Lynch wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 11, 2011 at 11:04 AM, Justin M. Streiner<
> streiner at cluebyfour.org>  wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 11 Aug 2011, jim deleskie wrote:
>>
>>   Having run both on some good sized networks, I can tell you to run
>>> what your ops folks know best.  We can debate all day the technical
>>> merits of one v another, but end of day, it always comes down to your
>>> most jr ops eng having to make a change at 2 am, you need to design
>>> for this case, if your using OSPF today and they know OSPF I'd say
>>> stick with it to reduce the chance of things blowing up at 2am when
>>> someone tries to 'fix' something else.
>>>
>> Agreed.  I did an OSPFv3 vs. IS-IS bake-off in my lab several months ago as
>> part of an IPv6 rollout, and one of the key deciding factors in going with
>> OSPFv3 over IS-IS was that our ops folks are much more familiar with OSPFv2.
>>   While there are difference between OSPFv2 and OSPFv3 in how they work, the
>> learning curve is a lot less steep than going from OSPFv2 to IS-IS.
>>
>> jms
>>
>> Do not underestimate the power of ops engineers. Really is not that
> difficult to learn ISIS and they can add it to their resume.

What would you rather rely on at 3am in the morning when things are 
breaking?  Someone who has just learned IS-IS or someone who already has 
good experience with OSPF?  I would tend towards the latter in my 
decision making, unless there is significant enough advantage to be 
gained by the other.

Paul




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