Open Shortest Path First

Overview Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) is a routing protocol developed for Internet Protocol (IP) networks by the interior gateway protocol (IGP) working group of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). The working group was formed in 1988 to design an IGP based on the shortest path first (SPF) algorithm for use in the Internet, a large, international network connecting research institutions, government agencies, universities, and private businesses. Like the Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (IGRP), OSPF was created because the Routing Information Protocol (RIP) was, in the mid-1980s, increasingly unable to serve large, heterogeneous internetworks. As indicated by its acronym, OSPF has two primary characteristics. The first is that it is open, in that its specification is in the public domain. The OSPF specification is published as Request For Comments (RFC) 1247. The second principal characteristic is that it is based on the SPF algorithm, which is sometimes referred to as the Dijkstra algorithm, named for the person credited with its creation.