A device that is running OSPFv2 maintains a local RIB in which it stores all routes to destinations that it has learned from
its neighbors. At the end of each SPF, OSPF attempts to install the best (that is, the least-cost) routes to a destination
present in the local RIB into the global IPv4 routing table. The global RIB will be updated only when routes are added, deleted,
or changed. Routes in the local RIB and Forwarding Information Base (FIB) will not compute when intermediate results are computed
during SPF, resulting in fewer dropped packets in some circumstances.
By default, OSPF installs discard routes to null0 for any area range (internal) or summary-address (external) prefixes that
it advertises to other devices. Installation of a discard route can prevent routing loops in cases where portions of a summary
do not have a more specific route in the RIB. Normally, internal discard routes are installed with an administrative distance
of 110, while external discard routes have an administrative distance of 254.
There may be rare circumstances, however, when some other values are needed. For example, if one OSPF process installs a
route that exactly matches an area range configured on another OSPF process, the internal discard routes for the second OSPF
process could be given a higher (less desirable) administrative distance.
By default, the contents of the global RIB are used to compute inter-area summaries, NSSA translation, and forwarding addresses
for type-5 and type-7 LSAs. Each of these functions can be configured to use the contents of the OSPF local RIB instead of
the global RIB for their computation. Using the local RIB for the computation may be slightly faster in some circumstances,
but because the local RIB has information for only a particular instance of OSPF, using it for the computation may yield incorrect
results. Potential problems that may occur include routing loops and black-hole routes.