Area border routers (ABRs)

This type of OSPF router has membership in multiple areas . ABRs are used to connect the various areas in an AS to the backbone area for that AS. Multiple ABRs can be used to connect a given area to the backbone, and a given ABR can belong to multiple areas other than the backbone.

An ABR maintains a separate LSDB for each area to which it belongs. (All routers within the same area have identical LSDBs.) The ABR is responsible for flooding summary LSAs between its border areas. You can reduce summary LSA flooding by configuring area ranges. An area range enables you to assign an aggregate address to a range of IP addresses. This aggregate address is advertised instead of all the individual addresses it represents. You can assign up to eight ranges in an OSPF area. In the following example, routers R2 and R5 are ABRs because they both have membership in more than one area.
Example of deploying ABRs to connect areas to the backbone