OSPF was derived from several research efforts, including:

• Bolt, Beranek, and Newman's (BBN's) SPF algorithm 
  developed in 1978 for the ARPANET (a landmark 
  packet-switching network developed in the early 
  1970s)

• Dr. Perlman's research on fault-tolerant broadcasting 
  of routing information (1988)

• BNN's work on area routing (1986)

• An early version of OSI's Intermediate System to 
  Intermediate System (IS-IS) routing protocol
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