OSPF and NSF

[ToryDav]

Does Cisco Meraki support Non-Stop Forwarding?

Is enabling Non-Stop forwarding on the routing core (not Meraki, Cat 4500x) with MS 350 peers downstream a bad idea?

[KarstenI · Accepted solution]

I never heard of Meraki supporting NSF. So I took a short capture of an OSPF hello from a Meraki switch:

No option for this extension. I would keep it disabled on the core.

[ToryDav]

Hey @KarstenI, my assumption was also that it would not be supported, in traditional Meraki fashion to stay in alignment with "Keep it simple", I know Meraki typically doesn't implement "bells and whistles".

Thanks for digging a little deeper into this, I don't have L3 features on my Meraki lab switch to play with this in the lab.

Also, just to be sure, I will elaborate a little more:

There are several sites all Meraki, OSPF routing to the primary core 4500x VSS pair, and then each location has a backup link to the secondary site for failover to a secondary 4500x VSS pair.

I notice on the Cisco Core's the NSF feature is enabled under the OSPF process, but In this scenario with Meraki I wonder why. I'm assuming this is old config from before Meraki was installed at each location, since before they routed EIGRP with NSF enabled to Cisco Catalyst switches.

I will request justification as to why this feature is enabled today. I also agree this should be disabled.

[KarstenI]

If there are peers using NSF, it should not cause any trouble if it is enabled on the core. The NSF-capable switch will see that the MS is not capable and just ignore this feature. Still, I would disable anything that is not needed.

[ToryDav]

Thanks for the insights here. I will discuss this with them and see if it makes sense to disable, or not.