Routing – OSPF or iBGP for interior routing protocol

bgpigpospfrouterrouting

So the plan is, two core routers each with a eBGP session to one of two ISPs with full routes. Both routers publish their full tables to each other so they can control traffic flow more intelligently via iBGP.

For argument's sake three access routers have a path to each core router. I was going to configure iBGP and publish a default route from each core router so they have some resilience against hardware failure and use filters to control what routes are actually sent to the access devices.

I have heard that people use OSPF for their IGP generally, of course there's an element of it being case specific.

My question is: What would be the benefit of replacing iBGP with OSPF?

Best Answer

iBGP requires a full mesh or use of mitigation like confederations or route reflectors, BGP doesn't converge with anything like the speed of OSPF, etc.

Each OSPF router would have a full understanding of all the routes that are in the area in which it resides without needing a full mesh, and it converges very, very quickly.

Using an IGP is recommended with iBGP. Without the IGP, iBGP must neighbor on external-facing interfaces, with an IGP, iBGP can neighbor on loopback interfaces which never go down, and can have multiple paths to reach.

I have seen iBGP-only for local routing, but it is more difficult and fragile.