OSPF first look at the prefered path list as below and secondly compare path metric: Intra-Area (O) Inter-Area (O IA) External Type 1 (E1) NSSA Type 1 (N1) External Type 2 (E2) NSSA Type 2 (N2) So most appropriate answer is to configure R1-R2 link as multiarea adjacency. under the interface configuration mode: ip ospf network point-to-point ip ospf multi-area 1 https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/ip/open-shortest-path-first-ospf/118879-configure- ospf-00.html