Describe the OSPF routing protocol.?

What will be an ideal response?

?OSPF (Open Shortest Path First) is an IGP and a link-state routing protocol used on interior or border routers. It was introduced as an improvement to RIP and can coexist with RIP (or RIPv2) on a network. Unlike RIP, OSPF imposes no hop limits on a transmission path. Also, OSPF uses a more complex algorithm for determining best paths than what RIP uses. Under optimal network conditions, the best path is the most direct path between two points. If excessive traffic levels or an outage preclude data from following the most direct path, a router may determine that the most efficient path actually goes through additional routers. Each router running OSPF maintains a database of the other routers' links. If OSPF learns of the failure of a given link, the router can rapidly compute an alternate path. This calculation demands more memory and CPU power than RIP would, but it keeps network bandwidth to a minimum and provides a very fast convergence time, often invisible to users. The algorithms used by link-state protocols and their faster convergence time also prevent routing loops. OSPF is supported by all modern routers. Therefore, it is commonly used on autonomous systems that rely on a mix of routers from different manufacturers.