Episode 14 – Digging Deep into the IS-IS Routing Protocol
In a return to our routing protocol series, Russ White and Nick Russo join Network Collective to talk about some of the intricacies of the IS-IS routing protocol. While not usually found in enterprises, Service Providers have used IS-IS as the underlay to their MPLS networks and it is starting to make an appearance as the underlay to several newer enterprise technologies. If you’ve been curious about how it works, and how it is different than what you use today, this show is for you.
Show Links
https://www.iso.org/standard/30932.html
https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1142
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dijkstra%27s_algorithm
Show Notes
- IS-IS Characteristics
- IS-IS is a graph
- Vertices, edges, link types, cost
- Uses Dijkstra’s algorithm
- Based on Type Link Value protocol (TLV) instead of fixed type fields which allows IS-IS to be very extensible
- Similar to OSPF, but the P-node is called the DIS, not the DR, and behaves a bit differently
- Originally built for host routing
- Not an IP protocol
- direct encapsulation to L2, ethertype 0xFEFE
- Provides some inherent security benefits (very hard to reach in and attack; OSPF solved this with TTL security)
- QoS over L2VPNs
- If the EFP is matching IP DSCP for QoS, ISIS may not Continue reading
- IS-IS is a graph