Rules and Standards

As OSPF has some challenges in deployment outside of a datacenter environment, we will need to all adhere to some rules to prevent from encountering a routing problem. OSPF, unlike BGP or other protocols, may/will refuse to connect to a peer which has different parameters set and can be a source of confusion.  Please follow these rules unless there is a good reason not to:

1. General    
   1. All OSPF usage will be on area 0.0.0.0 ( backbone area )     
   2. Set Router ID to the 10-69-net address of the Node
   3. All OSPF timers will be set to ( this is typically default ):
      • Link Cost 10
      • Retransmit Interval 5
      • Transmit Delay 1
      • Hello Interval 10
      • Dead Router Interval 40  
2. Interfaces should be in PtMP mode (not broadcast)   
3. OSPF "networks" should only be the 10-69-net, unless there is a special case
4. Redistribute Default Route should be never, unless you are distributing a default route
   • If you are redistributing a default route, do so as type 1 
   • Check with the rest of the network what the correct metric should be
5. Redistribute user networks via Redistribute Connected as type 1 
6. Mikrotik Only: Filter VPN point-to-point /32 links. They cause trouble.   
7. For RouterOS 6, do not also run BGP on the standard mesh bridge, unless there is a special case; this has been known to cause problems in the past
8. For RouterOS 7, BGP is working on the mesh bridge in a few locations as of July 2024; as ROS7 is not widely utilized within NYC Mesh yet, thorough testing and monitoring should be done for ROS7 routers