This book describes and compares both the IPv4 and IPv6 versions of OSPF and IS-IS. It explains OSPF and IS-IS by grounding the analysis on the principles of Link State Routing (LSR). It deliberately separates principles from technologies. Understanding the principles behind the technologies makes the learning process easier and more solid. Moreover, it helps uncovering the dissimilarities and commonalities of OSPF and IS-IS and exposing their stronger and weaker features. The chapters on principles explain the features of LSR protocols and discuss the alternative design options, independently of technologies. The chapters on technologies provide a comprehensive description of OSPF and IS-IS with enough detail for professionals that need to work with these technologies. The final part of the book describes and discusses a large set of experiments with Cisco routers designed to illustrate the various features of OSPF and IS-IS. In particular, the experiments related to the synchronization mechanisms are not usually found in the literature.
Rui Valadas is a Full Professor at Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal, and a senior researcher of Instituto de Telecomunicações, Portugal. He was previously at the University of Aveiro, Portugal. He has had a regular teaching activity since 1986 and has been responsible for more than 20 University courses, at the various levels, BSc, MSc, and PhD, mainly in the area of Computer Networking. He set up, at both the University of Aveiro and Instituto Superior Técnico, laboratory infrastructures for teaching Computer Networks. He also created Cisco Academies at both Universities and is a CCNA instructor. He organized several courses targeted to industry with a laboratory component, namely a practical course on basic TCP/IP networking and a practical course on TCP/IP networking security. He has reasoned for long on the teaching methodologies of Computer Networking and published several papers on the subject. Among other management duties, he was the first director of the PhD course in Telecommunications jointly organized by the Universities of Minho, Aveiro, and Porto, in Portugal, and he coordinates since 2009 the BSc/MSc on Telecommunications and Informatics Engineering of Instituto Superior Técnico. His scientific activity concentrated on two main areas: Wireless Optical Communications (in the past) and Computer Networking, with an emphasis in Routing and Traffic Engineering aspects (currently). He supervised more than 30 PhD thesis and MSc dissertations. He played an active role is the specification of the IEEE 802.11 standard, being the author of 20 contributions to this standard. He participated in 25 research projects, both national and European, most of them as the responsible investigator. He is the author of 4 book chapters, and more than 100 papers in international journals and conferences. His papers deserved more than 2000 citations and an h-index of 22, according to Google Scholar.
