OSPFv3 is the OSPFv2 equivalent for exchanging IPv6 prefixes. Recall that in IPv6, the network address is referred to as the prefix and the subnet mask is called the prefix-length.
Similar to its IPv4 counterpart, OSPFv3 exchanges routing information to populate the IPv6 routing table with remote prefixes, as shown in the figure.
Note: With the OSPFv3 Address Families feature, OSPFv3 includes support for both IPv4 and IPv6.
OSPFv2 runs over the IPv4 network layer, communicating with other OSPF IPv4 peers, and advertising only IPv4 routes.
OSPFv3 has the same functionality as OSPFv2, but uses IPv6 as the network layer transport, communicating with OSPFv3 peers and advertising IPv6 routes. OSPFv3 also uses the SPF algorithm as the computation engine to determine the best paths throughout the routing domain.
As with all IPv6 routing protocols, OSPFv3 has separate processes from its IPv4 counterpart. The processes and operations are basically the same as in the IPv4 routing protocol, but run independently. OSPFv2 and OSPFv3 each have separate adjacency tables, OSPF topology tables, and IP routing tables, as shown in the figure.
The OSPFv3 configuration and verification commands are similar those used in OSPFv2.