The majority of critical events occur when OSPF is enabled on a router, at which time the designated router is elected and neighbor adjacencies are formed. During this initial period a potential flood of traps is unnecessary since the events are expected. To avoid unnecessary traps, a router should not originate expected OSPF interface related traps until two of that interface's dead timer intervals have elapsed. The expected OSPF interface traps are ospfIfStateChange, ospfVirtIfStateChange, ospfNbrStateChange, ospfVirtNbrStateChange, ospfTxRetranmit and ospfVirtIfTxRetransmit. Additionally, ospfMaxAgeLsa and ospfOriginateLsa traps should not be originated until two dead timer intervals have elapsed where the dead timer interval used should be the dead timer with the smallest value.