OSPF LAB

Multi Area OSPFv3

Company: NETWORK TECHNICIAN (STUDENT)

Multiarea OSPFv3 Configuration – IPv6 Routing Lab

This lab focused on configuring and verifying Multiarea OSPFv3 routing across a three-router IPv6 network using Cisco Packet Tracer. The objective was to implement OSPFv3 with multiple areas, assign correct interface-level configurations, and verify successful routing across all devices.

Project Overview

The topology included three routers—RA, RB, and RC—connected through serial and Ethernet links. Each router had multiple interfaces, and the network was logically divided into the following areas:

  • Area 0: Backbone (used for inter-area connections)

  • Area 1: LAN segments off RA

  • Area 2: LAN segments off RC

Each router interface was assigned a unique IPv6 address and placed into its appropriate OSPF area.

Configuration Process

1. Enabled IPv6 Routing

The first step was enabling IPv6 routing globally on all three routers to allow IPv6 packet forwarding.

ipv6 unicast-routing

2. Configured OSPFv3 Routing Process

For each router, I initiated the OSPFv3 process with a consistent process ID (1 across all routers) and assigned a unique router ID for identification in the OSPF domain.

  • RA: router-id 1.1.1.1

  • RB: router-id 2.2.2.2

  • RC: router-id 3.3.3.3

ipv6 router ospf 1 router-id X.X.X.X

3. Assigned OSPF Areas to Interfaces

OSPFv3 is interface-based, so I manually configured each interface with its IPv6 address and assigned it to the correct OSPF area.

Example configuration on RA:

interface g0/0 ipv6 address 2001:db8:1:a1::1/64 ipv6 ospf 1 area 1interface g0/1 ipv6 address 2001:db8:1:a2::1/64 ipv6 ospf 1 area 1interface s0/0/0 ipv6 address 2001:db8:1:ab::2/64 ipv6 ospf 1 area 0

I followed the same pattern for RB and RC, using the addressing and area assignments based on the topology design.

4. Verified OSPFv3 Neighbor Relationships

I used the following command to confirm that routers on serial links established neighbor relationships:

show ipv6 ospf neighbor

The output verified that adjacency was successfully formed between:

  • RA and RB over the 2001:db8:1:ab::/64 link

  • RB and RC over the 2001:db8:1:bc::/64 link

5. Verified OSPFv3 Operation and Routing Table

To confirm successful OSPFv3 implementation, I tested the following:

  • Ping tests: From RA, I pinged IPv6 addresses located in Area 0 and Area 2 to verify end-to-end connectivity across the entire OSPFv3 domain.

  • Routing information: I verified that routes to all remote networks were correctly learned via OSPFv3 using the following commands:

show ipv6 route show ipv6 ospf show ipv6 ospf database

The output confirmed:

  • All expected OSPF-learned routes were installed in the IPv6 routing table

  • The database contained LSAs from all areas, showing proper inter-area communication

  • Interfaces were correctly associated with their OSPF areas and neighbors were in the FULL state

Conclusion

This lab provided hands-on experience with configuring and verifying OSPFv3 in a multiarea IPv6 network. It reinforced important concepts such as:

  • The interface-based nature of OSPFv3

  • Proper area segmentation to optimize routing

  • The necessity of backbone Area 0 for inter-area routing

  • Verifying routing protocol operation using CLI diagnostics

By completing this project, I demonstrated my ability to design, configure, and troubleshoot advanced routing topologies using IPv6 and multiarea OSPFv3—skills directly applicable to real-world enterprise networking environments.