OSPF Production Readiness Checklist

Checklist discipline. Every item is meant to be answered yes / no with evidence. Items marked critical are non-negotiable; items marked warn are judgement calls; items marked info are baseline expectations.

Items

• Router ID explicit and unique (severity: info)
• Area plan documented (severity: info)
• Passive interfaces on user segments (severity: info)
• OSPF authentication configured (severity: critical)
• Hello / dead timers consistent across the area (severity: warn)
• Network type consistent across the area (severity: warn)
• MTU consistent across the area (severity: info)
• ABR summarisation planned and validated (severity: info)
• Stub / NSSA areas configured where appropriate (severity: info)
• Adjacency state monitoring configured (severity: info)
• LSA count monitoring configured (severity: warn)
• OSPF convergence test performed in canary (severity: warn)

Severity legend

• info: baseline expectation
• warn: judgement call; production-grade depends on context
• critical: non-negotiable; a missed critical item is a release blocker

Evidence retention

The completed checklist is evidence for the change ticket, the audit, and the post-incident review. Store it where it can be recovered if the router is lost.