Intermediate System to Intermediate System Protocol (IS-IS)

This section describes the Intermediate System to Intermediate System Protocol (IS-IS). The following topics are included in this section:

• IS-IS background and concepts
• How IS-IS works Troubleshooting IS-IS Simple IS-IS example
• Network layout and assumptions
• Expectations
• CLI configuration Verification Troubleshooting

IS–IS background and concepts

Intermediate System to Intermediate System Protocol (IS-IS) allows routing of ISO’s OSI protocol stack Connectionless Network Service (CLNS). IS-IS is an Interior Gateway Protocol (IGP) not intended to be used between Autonomous Systems (ASes).

Background

IS-IS was developed by Digital Equipment Corporation and later standardized by ISO in 1992 as ISO 19589 (see RFC 1142—note this RFC is different from the ISO version). At roughly the same time, the Internet Engineering Task Force developed OSPF (see Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) on page 377). After the initial version, IP support was added to IS-IS and this version was called Integrated IS-IS (see RFC 1195). Its widespread use started when an early version of IS-IS was included with BSD v4.3 Linux as the routed daemon. The routing algorithm used by IS-IS, the Bellman–Ford algorithm, first saw widespread use as the initial routing algorithm of the ARPANET.

IS-IS is a link state protocol well-suited to smaller networks that is in widespread use and has near universal support on routing hardware. It is quick to configure, and works well if there are no redundant paths. However, IS- IS updates are sent out node-by-node, so it can be slow to find a path around network outages. IS-IS also lacks good authentication, can not choose routes based on different quality of service methods, and can create network loops if you are not careful. IS-IS uses Djikstra’s algorithm to find the best path, like OSPF.

While OSPF is more widely known, IS-IS is a viable alternative to OSPF in enterprise networks and ISP infrastructures, largely due to its native support for IPv6 and its non-disruptive methods for splitting, merging, migrating, and renumbering network areas.

The FortiGate implementation supports IS-IS for IPv4 (see RFCs 1142 and 1162), but does not support IS-IS for IPv6 (although this technically can be achieved using the ZebOS routing module).

How IS-IS works

As one of the original modern dynamic routing protocols, IS-IS is straightforward. Its routing algorithm is not complex, there are some options to allow fine tuning, and it is straightforward to configure IS-IS on FortiGate units.

From RFC 1142:

The routing algorithm used by the Decision Process is a shortest path first (SPF) algorithm. Instances of the algorithm are run independently and concurrently by all intermediate systems in a routing domain. IntraDomain routing of a PDU occurs on a hop-by-hop basis: that is, the algorithm determines only the next hop, not the complete path, that a data PDU will take to reach its destination.

IS–IS versus static routing

IS-IS was one of the earliest dynamic routing protocols to work with IP addresses. As such, it is not as complex as more recent protocols. However, IS-IS is a big step forward from simple static routing.

While IS-IS may be slow in response to network outages, static routing has zero response. The same is true for convergence—static routing has zero convergence. Both IS-IS and static routing have the limited hop count, so it is neither a strength nor a weakness.