OSPF: STUB AREAS VS STUB NETWORKS: WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE?

Do you ever get the feeling that they make networking protocols deliberately complicated, just to give us something to study?

Think about it. When it comes to BGP Weight and Local Preference, the biggest number wins. But for BGP MED, the lowest number wins. Why? Were they drunk when they decided that? As if BGP wasn’t complicated enough, they thought they’d throw that into the mix? The people who made BGP deserve nothing less than life in prison.

With Administrative Distance, the smallest number wins. But with HSRP and Designated Router elections, the biggest number wins. For Router IDs in routing protocols, the highest IP wins. But for spanning tree elections, the lowest Bridge ID wins. I swear that Barry Cisco (the inventor of the internet) does this on purpose, just so he can charge us more for the exams we inevitably fail because of his bullshit. Damn you, Barry Cisco. Damn you to hell!!!

I found a new example while digging deeper into OSPF: Stub Areas and Stub Networks. Two entirely different concepts, with needlessly similar names. What’s the difference? Why do they have such similar names? If you’re new to OSPF it can be super-confusing. So, I decided to write it all up.

In short: stub networks are a kind of network that OSPF uses to draw the network map; stub areas are a special kind of area where you can filter out IPs and replace them with a default route.

But something tells me that you’re not the kind of person who wants the short answer. Something tells me that you’ve got a thirst to learn. Well, in that case, let’s go into more detail on each of them.

• If you’d like to find out more about stub areas, click here to read my post describing what they are and how they work.
• Then, if you’d like to find out more about stub networks, give this a click to find out all about them.

Thank you for reading!