Troubleshooting 8 min read STABLE

OSPF Neighbor Stuck in INIT: Complete Diagnosis

Detailed runbook for resolving stuck OSPF adjacencies, with Wireshark captures.

D
DailyOps
Published 2025-01-08

An OSPF neighbor stuck in INIT state is one of the most common production issues — and one of the most misdiagnosed. This runbook walks through the complete diagnostic chain.

We cover MTU mismatches, ACL filtering, authentication key mismatches, and broadcast network type errors with packet captures for each scenario.

Includes a decision tree and the exact show commands to run on Cisco, Juniper, and Arista platforms.

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