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The Internet Engineering Task Force

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OSPF is one of the most popular interior gateway protocols. It gathers updates from other link-state routers and combines them to create a map of the network. OSPF was developed in 1988, after RIP began running into technical issues with larger networks. While OSPF has been around for almost 30 years, it is still widely used today, and is still one of the best IGP 's available.

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) developed OSPF as a solution to the technically flawed RIP routing protocol. In 1988, they formed a group to research and develop a new routing protocol based on the link-state algorithm, which was more suited towards modern networks. Under the development of ARPAnet, some research had already been conducted on the link-state algorithm. The IETF named the new protocol Open Shortest Path First (OSPF). Its name is relatively self-explanatory: The word open refers to open source, allowing everyone to use it without proper licensing. The SPF portion points to the shortest path first, based on the link-state algorithm it uses. The link-state algorithm was designed to allow routers to determine the shortest path between any two networks. The original version of OSPF, described in RFC 1131, was published in October of 1989. There have been several more iterations of the OSPF protocol, namely OSPF version 2, published in July of 1991 (Kozierok). OSPF differs from its predecessor, RIPv1, in many ways (including several upgrades to the algorithm itself). Updates are

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