Customizing IS-IS for Your Network Design

Your software release may not support all the features documented in this module. For the latest feature information and caveats, see the release notes for your platform and software release. To find information about the features documented in this module, and to see a list of the releases in which each feature is supported, see the Feature Information Table at the end of this document.

Use Cisco Feature Navigator to find information about platform support and Cisco software image support. To access Cisco Feature Navigator, go to www.cisco.com/go/cfn. An account on Cisco.com is not required.

• Before performing the tasks in this module, you should be familiar with the concepts described in the "Integrated IS-IS Routing Protocol Overview" module.
• You should understand the concept of IP addressing. For more information on IP addressing, see the "Configuring IPv4 Addresses" module of the Cisco IOS IP Addressing Services Configuration Guide.
• You should know your network design and how you want traffic to flow through it before configuring IS-IS. Define areas, prepare an addressing plan for the routers (including defining the network entity titles [NETs]), and determine the interfaces that will run Integrated IS-IS.
• IS-IS must be enabled.

If you have already configured a metric for a specific interface by entering the isis metric command, the metric that has been configured for that specific interface will take precedence over any default set by the metric command.

You can enhance network traffic flow by configuring IS-IS metric values for Level-1 or Level-2 routing, in order to prioritize traffic through certain paths. You can customize network traffic flow by changing the metric cost for a specified interface. All IS-IS links use the metric of 10 by default. The protocol does not automatically incorporate link attributes such as bandwidth or delay when metric values are assigned. The total cost to a destination is the sum of the costs on all outgoing interfaces along a particular path from the source to the destination. The least-cost paths are preferred.

If you want to configure a global default metric, see the Configuring an IS-IS Default Metric.

On multi-access networks, IS-IS elects a router to act as a pseudo-node representing the multi-access circuit. The elected router is known as the designated intermediate system (DIS). The DIS issues pseudo-node LSPs listing all of the routers which are reachable on the network. Each router on the network advertises in its non-pseudonode LSPs reachability to the DIS. This reduces the amount of information that needs to be advertised. A DIS is elected for each level that is operating on the network, for example both Level 1 and Level 2. By default, all routers have the same priority for being elected DIS. The MAC address of each router's interface onto the network is used as the tiebreaker. When all routers have the same priority, the addition or removal of a router onto the network can result in a chance in the DIS. This churn can be prevented by assigning a higher priority to the router which you wish to act as the DIS. Priorities can be configured individually for Level 1 and Level 2. By default the priority is 64. You can configure the priority in the range from 0 to 127.

You can configure a summary address to represent summarized (aggregate) addresses within the IS-IS routing table. This process is called route summarization. Using a summary address can enhance scalability and network stability because it reduces the amount of information that needs to be advertised and reduces the frequency of updates required. For example, a single route flap may not cause the summary advertisement to flap. The disadvantage of using the summary addresses is that routing may be sub-optimal, for example, the path to a specific destination covered by the summary address may be longer than it would have been, had all the individual addresses been advertised. Summary addresses are most commonly used to summarize routes from one Level-one area into the Level-2 subdomain. One summary address can include multiple groups of addresses for a given level. Routes learned from other routing protocols can also be summarized. The metric used to advertise the summary is the smallest metric of all the more-specific routes.

In Cisco IOS software, IS-IS has a default metric value of 10 for all active interfaces. If the interface is passive, the default value is zero. Rather than change the metric values for the active interfaces one by one, you can configure a different default metric value to be used by all interfaces. All interfaces that had the original IS-IS default metric 10 will be configured with the new default value. Besides offering the user the convenience of being able to globally configure the value for all IS-IS interfaces, the feature helps prevent errors that may occur when interfaces are individually configured to change the metric value. For example the user may remove configured metrics from an interface, thereby restoring the default metric value of 10--perhaps unintentionally making that interface a highly preferred one in the network. Such an occurrence on the wrong interface could mean the rerouting of traffic across the network on an undesirable path.

• Enhancing Your IS-IS Network Design at the Interface Level
  
• Enhancing Your IS-IS Network Design at the Router Level
  

• Example Configuring a Global Default Metric for IPv4
  

• To customize IS-IS for achieving fast convergence and scalability, see the "Overview of IS-IS Fast Convergence" module.
• To enhance IS-IS network security, see the "Enhancing Security in an IS-IS Network" module.