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Understanding Multiple Address Families for OSPFv3

By default, OSPFv3 supports only unicast IPv6 routes. In Junos OS Release 9.2 and later, you can configure OSPFv3 to support multiple address families, including IPv4 unicast, IPv4 multicast, and IPv6 multicast. This mutliple address family support allows OSPFv3 to support both IPv6 and IPv4 nodes. Junos OS maps each address family to a separate realm as defined in Internet draft draft-ietf-ospf-af-alt-06.txt, Support for Address Families in OSPFv3. Each realm maintains a separate set of neighbors and link-state database.

When you configure multiple address families for OSPFv3, there is a new instance ID field that allows multiple OSPFv3 protocol instances per link. This allows a single link to belong to multiple areas.

You configure each realm independently. We recommend that you configure an area and at least one interface for each realm.

These are the default import and export routing tables for each of the four address families:

  • IPv6 unicast: inet6.0
  • IPv6 multicast: inet6.2
  • IPv4 unicast: inet.0
  • IPv4 multicast: inet.2

With the exception of virtual links, all configurations supported for the default IPv6 unicast family are supported for the address families that have to be configured as realms.

Published: 2012-12-08