Routing – OSPF manual neighbor configuration requirement on NBMA network

broadcastframe-relayospfrouting

Why are OSPF neighbors manually configured on NBMA networks even when you enabled it with the broadcast keyword in frame map statements?

Example is NBMA point-to-multipoint access.

Thanks.

Best Answer

Frame relay does not support real broadcast, it uses pseudo broadcast, meaning that it replicates incoming multicast/broadcast to all DLCIs that have the broadcast keyword on the frame-relay map statements. DLCIs learned via inverse ARP will always have broadcast enabled.

When you choose the network type you tell OSPF how to behave, is DR/BDR used and is multicast used?

With non-broadcast or point-to-multipoint non-broadcast (Cisco specific) you need to define neighbor statements. The reason being that you have told OSPF that you have no broadcast capability so you want to use unicast for the control plane traffic. OSPF therefore expects that you configure neighbor statements before it starts sending hellos.

I've had a few facepalm moments in the past studying for the CCIE where I did enable non-broadcast and no adjacencies were coming up. Debugs showed no hellos going out which is usually a sign you forgot a neighbor statement or are running passive-interface.