Posts Tagged ‘passive’

To pass the BSCI exam and become a CCNP, you have to be aware of the proper use of passive interfaces. You learned about passive interfaces in your CCNA studies, but here we’ll review the basic concept and clear up one misconception regarding passive interfaces and OSPF.

Configuring an interface as passive will still allow the interface to receive routing updates, but the interface will no longer transmit them. While the command itself would make you think this command will be applied at the interface level, that is not the case. Below, we’ll configure ethernet0 as a RIP passive interface.

R1(config)#router rip

R1(config-router)#passive-interface ethernet0

Ethernet0 will no longer send RIP routing updates, but will accept them.

The passive interface concept is clear enough with RIP, IGRP, and EIGRP – all protocols that send routing update packets. But OSPF doesn’t send routing update packets – OSPF sends link state advertisements. It’s the inability of the passive interface command to stop LSAs that lead many to think that passive interfaces cannot be used with OSPF. Read the rest of this entry »