Route Convergence Monitoring and Diagnostics (RCMD) is a mechanism to monitor OSPF and ISIS convergence events, gather details about the SPF runs and time taken to provision routes and LDP labels across all LCs on the router.

RCMD is a tool that collects and reports data related to routing convergence. Highlights of the RCMD mechanism are:

• Lightweight and always-on using route flow markers across routing components (all nodes & MC).

• Tracks most convergence events and all routes affected by them.

• Provides within-router view with statistics and time-lines on per convergence event basis.

• Measurements against time-line/SLA and triggers specified EEM actions on excess.

• 'On the router' reports via CLI/XML interface.

• Each RCMD enabled router provides a digest of convergence data.

The events that are monitored and reported by RCMD are:

• OSPF and IS-IS SPF events (default VRF only).

• Add/delete of specific external or inter-area/level prefixes.

• IGP flooding propagation delays for LSA/LSP changes.

RCMD runs in two modes:

• Monitoring—detecting events and measuring convergence.

• Diagnostics—additional (debug) information collection for 'abnormal' events.

The Route Convergence Monitoring and Diagnostics (RCMD) database monitoring enables LFA computation report in Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) and Intermediate System-to-Intermediate System (IS-IS). The detailed LFA computation report is displayed as a separate report and is not associated with any event.

The Route Convergence Monitoring and Diagnostics (RCMD) prefix monitoring feature enables convergence monitoring for specific individual prefixes in Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) and Intermediate System-to-Intermediate System (IS-IS) Interior Gateway Protocols (IGP). In IGP, when the route information is created, the prefix is verified against the configured prefix-list. If the prefix is found to be monitored, it is marked for monitoring and information about each prefix change event is captured. The RCMD prefix monitoring individually monitors specific prefixes on each RCMD enabled router in the network. A maximum of 10 prefixes can be monitored. Individual prefix monitoring compliments the probes enabled at customer network edges to monitor connectivity and availability of specific service end-points.

The RCMD prefix monitoring for IS-IS prefixes is enabled by configuring the prefix-list command under Router IS-IS monitor-convergence configuration mode. The RCMD prefix monitoring for OSPF prefixes is enabled by configuring the prefix-list command under Router OSPF monitor-convergence configuration mode.

For individual prefix monitoring, the prefixes are marked before those appear for the route calculation so that the monitoring does not affect the convergence of OSPF or ISIS routes.

The Route Convergence Monitoring and Diagnostics (RCMD) OSPF type 3/5/7 link-state advertisements (LSA) monitoring feature flags and differentiates the LSAs during the monitoring of LSAs. A change in route for type 3/5/7 LSAs has to be monitored. During the route calculation, if the route source appears to be type 3/5/7 LSAs and the route change is an add or delete action, then those prefixes have to be monitored. RCMD monitors all deletion of available paths (a purge operation) and addition of the first path (a restoration operation) for all type 3/5/7 LSAs. The OSPF type 3/5/7 LSAs are monitored and reported on a individual prefix basis. However, a modify operation that involves a change in paths not affecting reachability as a whole, is not monitored. Although all prefixes are logged for reporting, the convergence tracking is rate-limited for the first 10 prefixes that are affected in an SPF run.

The RCMD OSPF type 3/5/7 LSA monitoring is enabled by configuring the track-external-routes and track-summary-routes under Router OSPF monitor-convergence configuration mode.