Manual:OSPF Forwarding Address

1
Manual:OSPF Forwarding Address
Applies to RouterOS: v3, v4, v5 +
Lets assume that router R1 has static route to external network 192.168.0.0/24. OSPF is running between R1,R2 and
R3 and static route is distributed across the OSPF network.
The problem in such setup is obvious, R2 can not reach external network directly. Traffic from R2 will be forwarded
to router R1
[admin@R2] /ip route> print
Flags: X - disabled, A - active, D - dynamic,
C - connect, S - static, r - rip, b - bgp, o - ospf, m - mme,
B - blackhole, U - unreachable, P - prohibit
# DST-ADDRESS PREF-SRC GATEWAY DISTANCE
...
8 ADo 192.168.0.0/24 10.1.101.10 110
Fortunately OSPF has mechanism to solve such situations. OSPF router can set forwarding-address to something
other than itself which indicates that alternate nexthop is possible. Mostly forwarding address is set to 0.0.0.0
suggesting that the route is reachable only via the advertising router.
Forwarding address is set in LSA, if following conditions are met:
OSPF must be enabled on next-hop interface
Manual:OSPF Forwarding Address
2
Interface is not passive
Interface is not p2p or p2mp
Next-hop address falls into network provided in ospf networks
So knowing conditions, we can make router R1 to set forwarding address. We simply need to add 10.1.101.0/24
network to OSPF networks in router's R1 configuration:
/routing ospf network add network=10.1.101.0/24 area=backbone
Note: OSPF adjacency between routers in 10.1.101.0/24 network is not required
Now lets verify that forwarding address is actually working:
[admin@R2] /ip route> print
Flags: X - disabled, A - active, D - dynamic,
C - connect, S - static, r - rip, b - bgp, o - ospf, m - mme,
B - blackhole, U - unreachable, P - prohibit
# DST-ADDRESS PREF-SRC GATEWAY DISTANCE
...
8 ADo 192.168.0.0/24 10.1.101.1 110
On all OSPF routers you will see LSA set with forwarding address other than 0.0.0.0
[admin@R2] /routing ospf lsa>print detail
instance=default area=external type=as-external id=192.168.0.0
originator=10.1.101.1 sequence-number=0x80000073 age=16 checksum=0x8510
options="E" body=
netmask=255.255.255.0
forwarding-address=10.1.101.1
metric=30
route-tag=0x0
type1
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Article Sources and Contributors
3
Article Sources and Contributors
Manual:OSPF Forwarding Address Source: http://wiki.mikrotik.com/index.php?oldid=26193 Contributors: Marisb
Image Sources, Licenses and Contributors
Image:Version.png Source: http://wiki.mikrotik.com/index.php?title=File:Version.png License: unknown Contributors: Normis
File:ospf-forwarding.png Source: http://wiki.mikrotik.com/index.php?title=File:Ospf-forwarding.png License: unknown Contributors: Marisb
File:ospf-forwarding-traffic.png Source: http://wiki.mikrotik.com/index.php?title=File:Ospf-forwarding-traffic.png License: unknown Contributors: Marisb
Image:Icon-note.png Source: http://wiki.mikrotik.com/index.php?title=File:Icon-note.png License: unknown Contributors: Marisb, Route