Quagga IS-IS configuration - part 2

I will discuss here how to configure two routers, running on two separate virtual machines (Ubuntu 12.04, installed on vmware player, in my case), to form a simple isis adjacency. The two virtual machines are configured to run on the NAT provided by vmware, with 192.168.x.x/16 addresses. Since the is-is is running over IPv4, it is necessary to have an adjacency at IP level.

First of all, here is a simple configuration file for each of the routers :

! -*- isis -*-
!
! ISISd sample configuration file
!
hostname isisd 
password foo
enable password foo
log stdout 

interface eth0
ip router isis Test1
isis hello-interval 5
! isis lsp-interval 1000

! -- optional
isis circuit-type level-1
! isis password lallaa level-1 
! isis metric 1 level-1
! isis csnp-interval 5 level-1
! isis retransmit-interval 10
! isis retransmit-throttle-interval
! isis hello-multiplier 2 level-1
! isis priority 64

router isis Test1
net 49.0001.1111.1111.1111.00
is-type level-1
metric-style wide

For the other router, the NSAP address should be changed to use another system id, but the same area id, for example: 49.0001.2222.2222.2222.00

Before starting the router daemon, zebra needs to be started. Zebra is the underlying routing suite which allows is-is and the other protocols to send/receive routing packets via de physical interfaces of the systems.
Before starting zebra, the configuration file needs to be created similar to the method used for is-is:

# sudo cp /usr/local/quagga/zebra.conf.sample /usr/local/quagga/zebra.conf

Now, zebra can be started, followed by the isis daemon

# sudo zebra -d

# sudo isisd -d

After the first router is started, you can see hello packets being broadcast using the multicast address:


Also, after starting the second router, you can see broadcast packets coming from the second router:


Finally, after the adjacency is formed, the router 1 has an updated database and sends a CSNP packets to all the Layer-1 routers. The complete sequence number PDU (CSNP) lists all the link-state PDUs (LSPs) in the link-state database of the local router:

Also, by using the vty of the router, you can examine information of the running protocol. In this figure, I will run the command which shows the isis neighbors:

As you can see, the router Test1 has a new formed adjacency with the second router, with the SNPA 000c.2967.c374, which is the mac address of the physical interface of the Test2 router, used for transmiting the isis packets back to Test1.