16.5. Incremental updates -- summary link advertisements

When a new summary link advertisement is received, it is not necessary to recalculate the entire routing table. Call the destination described by the summary link advertisement N (N's address is obtained by masking the advertisement's Link State ID with the network/subnet mask contained in the body of the advertisement), and let Area A be the area to which the advertisement belongs. There are then two separate cases:

1. Area A is the backbone and/or the router is not an area border router. In this case, the following calculations must be performed. First, if there is presently an inter-area route to the destination N, N's routing table entry is invalidated, saving the entry's values for later comparisons. Then the calculation in Section 16.2 is run again for the single destination N. In this calculation, all of Area A's summary link advertisements that describe a route to N are examined. In addition, if the router is an area border router attached to one or more transit areas, the calculation in Section 16.3 must be run again for the single destination. If the results of these calculations have changed the cost/path to an AS boundary router (as would be the case for a Type 4 summary link advertisement) or to any forwarding addresses, all AS external link advertisements will have to be reexamined by rerunning the calculation in Section 16.4. Otherwise, if N is now newly unreachable, the calculation in Section 16.4 must be rerun for the single destination N, in case an alternate external route to N exists.

2. Area A is a transit area and the router is an area border router. In this case, the following calculations must be performed. First, if N's routing table entry presently contains one or more inter-area paths that utilize the transit area Area A, these paths should be removed. If this removes all paths from the routing table entry, the entry should be invalidated. The entry's old values should be saved for later comparisons. Next the calculation in Section 16.3 must be run again for the single destination N. If the results of this calculation have caused the cost to N to increase, the complete routing table calculation must be rerun starting with the Dijkstra algorithm specified in Section 16.1. Otherwise, if the cost/path to an AS boundary router (as would be the case for a Type 4 summary link advertisement) or to any forwarding addresses has changed, all AS external link advertisements will have to be reexamined by rerunning the calculation in Section 16.4. Otherwise, if N is now newly unreachable, the calculation in Section 16.4 must be rerun for the single destination N, in case an alternate external route to N exists.