An OSPF adjacency flaps only after failover on a firewall cluster sitting between routers.
An OSPF adjacency reaches ExStart and resets because the firewall cluster rewrites the MTU on one failover member only
The routing config matches, but one active member injects a different effective MTU after takeover.
Scenario
What to check first
- Identify the primary failure signal in the The Neighbors Agreed to Talk and the Standby Member Put a Different Size Envelope on the Conversation When It Took Over scenario.
- Separate visible symptoms from the underlying technical dependency.
- Describe the safest recovery path and the follow-up prevention work.
Checking checklist
- Summarize the current impact and the last known change.
- Collect direct evidence from logs, runtime state, and configuration before changing anything.
- Separate immediate recovery from permanent prevention work.
Recovery and prevention
Compare post-failover interface MTU behavior before forcing MTU-ignore everywhere.
Questions worth viewing together
No. Keep commands, logs, file names, APIs, and product names unchanged, then explain the reasoning in the selected UI language.
State the root cause, the evidence that supports it, and the safest recovery direction.
The source scenario is treated as an incident artifact. Guidance, checklist, hints, and explanations can be localized around it.
Similar cases seen in the field