I just wonder... Why MT has not supported IS-IS?

Its just sooooo coooooooooool protocol...

I don't see any reason why MT needs IS-IS, it already have OSPF which is also coooool protocol

Well... Cisco and Juniper also have OSPF but that didnt stopped them thinking: well IS-IS is... IS-IS after all

It is thinking of big league players...

Any specific reason why you can't use OSPF instead IS-IS

I think you don't understand my question. My point isn't which protocol is better... Although, I think IS-IS is better primary because everyone who knows thematic know that IS-IS better use available bandwidth as CPU and memory.

Back on topic... My point is why MT hasn't supported it? Is it because of some kind of license or something like that? Ićm just curious...

Cheers

OSPF provides more features and is supported by all devices. IS-IS is similar, but provides less features, and is not suported by all devices.

Hmm ...

I must admit I'm an IS-IS fan as well, and I believe that it does a few things better than OSPF, such as the TLV concept making it much more flexible. Read http://www.nada.kth.se/kurser/kth/2D149 ... 1.txt.html for a good analysis of the various differences.

However, I don't think IS-IS should be a focus for MikroTik at the moment. They would have to invent an ISO-protocol stack with CLNS, ISO addressing and all that in order to make it work. There are no such implementations for Linux, so they would have to engineer it from the bottom. I believe that MikroTik should focus on the areas they are already involved in, trying to extend the protocols they support, eg. extending the current MPLS implementation, extend IPv6, extend BGP etc.

Out of curiosity, what are your motivations for requesting IS-IS support? If you have a large telecom backbone that runs IS-IS, do you want to place MikroTik equipment inside of that backbone (no critique meant, just plain curiosity)?

I found this excellent blog post about integrated IS-IS vs. OSPF, and it does an excellent job on explaining why IS-IS can be superior to OSPF... Again, I still stand with my previous post on why MikroTik shouldn't work on IS-IS yet...

http://packetrancher.com/the-service-pr ... ted-is-is/

I must admit I'm an IS-IS fan as well, and I believe that it does a few things better than OSPF, such as the TLV concept making it much more flexible. Read http://www.nada.kth.se/kurser/kth/2D149 ... 1.txt.html for a good analysis of the various differences.

However, I don't think IS-IS should be a focus for MikroTik at the moment. They would have to invent an ISO-protocol stack with CLNS, ISO addressing and all that in order to make it work. There are no such implementations for Linux, so they would have to engineer it from the bottom. I believe that MikroTik should focus on the areas they are already involved in, trying to extend the protocols they support, eg. extending the current MPLS implementation, extend IPv6, extend BGP etc.

Out of curiosity, what are your motivations for requesting IS-IS support? If you have a large telecom backbone that runs IS-IS, do you want to place MikroTik equipment inside of that backbone (no critique meant, just plain curiosity)?

No ofcourse. I am network admin in my company (over 12 big factories in one system with over 4000 employee). We have cisco routers everywhere but also, we have mikrotik routers for wireless on few places (ap access and p2p links). I was considering is-is but MT inability was discouraged me. I could do redistribution but that just make my configuration more complicated so I stayed with ospf.

Regards!

another reason for is-is is because it support both ipv4 and ipv6, so we only need to run 1 ibgp protocol, not two as in ospf

...so we only need to run 1 ibgp protocol, not two as in ospf

what? ibgp <> ospf.

OSPF and OSPFv3 handle IPv4 and IPv6 so whats the comparison here?

what? ibgp <> ospf.

quess he meant IGP

OSPF and OSPFv3 handle IPv4 and IPv6 so whats the comparison here?

with IS-IS you have one protocol daemon instead of two, the less complicity the better

OSPF and OSPFv3 handle IPv4 and IPv6 so whats the comparison here?

with IS-IS you have one protocol daemon instead of two, the less complicity the better[/quote]

ok, I won't completely argue that point *but* having separate daemons too me means simplicity because I think it's easier to handle IPv4 and IPv6 nuances separately. Things are less muddled.

Typically ISIS is used in larger provider networks as it scales a bit better when you start getting to networks that have thousands of routers. OSPF is perfectly capable of handling several thousand routers if designed properly. They both use the same SPF algorithm and are very similar.

That said, because ISIS is so prevalent in the carrier and cloud world as an IGP, it would be nice to have it as a native protocol.

ISIS is also being used at Layer 2 to replace spanning tree in newer bridging technologies like TRILL, SPB and Cisco's FabricPath

To say that one protocol is better than the other really isn't the argument. They were both developed around the same time, if anything OSPF was the lazy approach to implementation by tying you to IPv4. What IS-IS does give you that OSPF cannot is protocol independence. One protocol to handle v4 and v6 address families among others. You wouldn't have to run a separate protocol like you do with OSPF. But I do understand that there are alot of devices in certain market segments that just don't have IS-IS as an option. But this feature is something that could help Mikrotik become an even more serious contender in the service provider space.


<poke>

Well... Cisco and Juniper also have OSPF but that didnt stopped them thinking: well IS-IS is... IS-IS after all

It is thinking of big league players...

i guess for same reason why CISCO didn't support things like IPIP and other MikroTik -specific things(there was Several and many of them STILL remain Very popular among MT consumers).
i bit wonder more lack support of things like say PCP and other, really "meaningful", usable things.

I think that the lack of IS-IS on Mikrotik's roadmap is going to be my reason from turning away from them. Other open source routing platforms are getting better and have some sort of basic IS-IS implimentation. But this might just not be a good space for Mikrotik to play in.

We have multiple vendors routers in our networks, Juniper, Cisco, Nokia and Mikrotik.

All but Mikrotik support ISIS so for now we are running OSPF as our IGP.

We would love to move to ISIS due to:

- Less complex architecture at scale
- Layer2 protocol minimises attack surface
- Support for IPv4 and IPv6 natively
- Support for extended functionality due to TLV support, e.g. signalling remote COS re-write via ISIS...

Mikrotik, please consider adding ISIS to RouterOS. The protocol is well documented, and there are several open source implementations to use as references.

+1 to add IS-IS to Router OS.

I think we would be able to to build larger IGP flooding domains with IS-IS due to features like incremental SPF - especially since the Tilera processor doesn't do as well under a heavy computational load like what we have seen in large BGP table sizes and slow convergence speed.

Typically from what i've seen with my ISP clients is that we can get a few thousand routes in a MikroTik based OSPF network (in the same area) before convergence speeds start to suffer due to heavy OSPF database updates.

I've got to say, Why not support an inherently better protocol? IS-IS, while bad in the middle east, is great in ISPs. The largest ISPs don't use OSPF for a reason, and BGP isn't going to improve on the tilera processors any time soon. At least not to the point that makes it usable with multiple peers and full tables

Please add support for IS-IS as it is far superior to OSPF (including how it handles tree changes). It would also make configuring large routed networks be far less of a headache.

+1 for IS-IS

I don't think it will ever show up in v6 but we may see it in v7 whenever that comes out.

we may see it in v7 whenever that comes out. :-)

Can't tell if those are the words of a man who has had a sneak peek of something…

…or words that are heavily laden in sarcasm! ;-)

Its just sooooo coooooooooool protocol...

I'd really like to know where hell I can use it in real life, so please tell the truth :)

So to say, I have neither ISPs to establish ISIS with, nor software/hardware within the LAN to use it internally.

But the proto is nice, really.

we may see it in v7 whenever that comes out.

Can't tell if those are the words of a man who has had a sneak peek of something…

…or words that are heavily laden in sarcasm!

#2

Its just sooooo coooooooooool protocol...

I'd really like to know where hell I can use it in real life, so please tell the truth

So to say, I have neither ISPs to establish ISIS with, nor software/hardware within the LAN to use it internally.

But the proto is nice, really.

IS-IS can scale much larger than OSPF due to the way it designs the hierarchy of flooding domains and by using Incremental SPF. This is why it's used as the IGP of choice for most large ISPs and Data Centers

IS-IS can scale much larger than OSPF due to the way it designs the hierarchy of flooding domains and by using Incremental SPF. This is why it's used as the IGP of choice for most large ISPs and Data Centers

I have an ISP customer with around 200 POP's and OSPF scalability is a real problem. We have had to make active efforts to remove any dynamic interfaces from OSPF and reduce the prefix count to minimise SPF re-calculations from loading up router CPU's. IS-IS would vastly minimise these specific problems.

IS-IS can scale much larger than OSPF due to the way it designs the hierarchy of flooding domains and by using Incremental SPF. This is why it's used as the IGP of choice for most large ISPs and Data Centers

I have an ISP customer with around 200 POP's and OSPF scalability is a real problem. We have had to make active efforts to remove any dynamic interfaces from OSPF and reduce the prefix count to minimise SPF re-calculations from loading up router CPU's. IS-IS would vastly minimise these specific problems.

I recently found out at the European MUM that OSPFv2 has a bug that will only allow 120 LSAs under certain conditions and cannot fragment the data beyond a single packet in the OSPF database exchange. The workaround is to use the highest MTU possible but it still can't be fixed in the current RouterOS version.

Wonder if this is at the root of issues with large scale OSPF deployments that we've seen

We have an ISP struggling with power hungry Ciscos at their towers because they implement IS-IS ....
Has Mikrotik changed its position on this ...!!!
Should we expect anything
Thank you.

Looks like MT has a lot to implement beside IS-IS.

Anyway noone will use MT devices instead of Ciscos or Jun's in ISP environment.

We do not have plans to implement ISIS at least not in near future.

We do not have plans to implement ISIS at least not in near future.

Regarding the 200+ PoP scaling issue...

Yes, IS-IS scales "better", but you shouldn't really be running into issues at that size even with OSPF in a single area...

Best practice for a network that large is to put only loopbacks and link-nets into your IGP (be it OSPF, IS-IS, or even EIGRP), while keeping all other networks in BGP (via Loopback addresses and next-hop-self) with the BGP routes recursively resolving against the IGP routes. Reflectors (with next-hop-propagate, not next-hop-self!) will help that scale.

This keeps OSPF stable and fast, and the number of routes it needs to deal with to a minimum of the number of routers, plus the number of links between them.

Personally, I'd go further and make it a multi-service transport network, by adding in MPLS and constraining BGP to the edge (without it, all routers will need BGP); but if IP is your only thing, and you can tolerate excessive BGP sessions, it isn't necessary.

--Eric

IS-IS can scale much larger than OSPF due to the way it designs the hierarchy of flooding domains and by using Incremental SPF. This is why it's used as the IGP of choice for most large ISPs and Data Centers

I have an ISP customer with around 200 POP's and OSPF scalability is a real problem. We have had to make active efforts to remove any dynamic interfaces from OSPF and reduce the prefix count to minimise SPF re-calculations from loading up router CPU's. IS-IS would vastly minimise these specific problems.

I recently found out at the European MUM that OSPFv2 has a bug that will only allow 120 LSAs under certain conditions and cannot fragment the data beyond a single packet in the OSPF database exchange. The workaround is to use the highest MTU possible but it still can't be fixed in the current RouterOS version.

Wonder if this is at the root of issues with large scale OSPF deployments that we've seen

What are those conditions? I haven't seen anything like that, and checking just now, I have 296 'router' LSAs and 344 'network' LSAs (plus 4 external LSAs that shouldn't be there... got some fixing to do there :-/ ), all working fine.

--Eric

OSPF just for BGP, can scale out to thousands. ISIS for this role is just lazy.

+1 for IS-IS
+1000 for EIGRP which is not Cisco proprietary and hasn't been for years

They would have to invent an ISO-protocol stack with CLNS, ISO addressing and all that in order to make it work. There are no such implementations for Linux, so they would have to engineer it from the bottom.

There now is a Linux implementation of IS-IS (and multithreaded BGP) and it was suggested multiple times to Mikrotik: https://frrouting.org/

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=129910&p=722727&hil ... ng#p722727
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=141920&p=699565&hil ... ng#p699565
viewtopic.php?f=14&t=98095&p=691015&hil ... ng#p691015
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=120397&p=592274&hil ... ng#p592036

What are those conditions? I haven't seen anything like that, and checking just now, I have 296 'router' LSAs and 344 'network' LSAs (plus 4 external LSAs that shouldn't be there... got some fixing to do there :-/ ), all working fine.

--Eric

Some users have thousand routers and several hundred of thousand networks

+1.

Also, in the world of ever increasing security threats, IS-IS runs at Layer 2 and not Layer 3 to form IGP adjacencies, so it is much harder to DDoS the control plane when it doesn't use L3.

I would imagine that we won't see this even considered until ros7 comes out..

I don't see any reason why MT needs IS-IS, it already have OSPF which is also coooool protocol

This shouldnt be the answer from official support team!

OSPF suuuuucks for wireless networks, company acquisitions and companies with rapid expansion. It's ok for university campuses or businesses that generally don't change much with a fairly fixed topology, but not for service providers or many modern companies that expand in unpredictable ways
Having to have everything connect to Area0 and no Area-Area connectivity is a rubbish design for them. IS-IS is much better suited just because you don't need those 2 rules and hence you don't need to constantly redesign the network, often in suboptimal ways just to not break connectivity and keep the logical topology under control

+1 for IS-IS

ISIS would be a nice feature to have. I'm using eBGP as an iBGP to overcome the slowness and other oddities with OSPF and complexity of dual stack with OSPF. ISIS would be a welcome add for sure.