The type of metric, with which the external routes are advertised into the OSPF routing domain. OSPF supports two types of external metrics. Type 1 external metrics are expressed in the same units as the OSPF interface cost (i.e., in terms of the link state metric). Type 2 external metrics are an order of magnitude larger; any Type 2 metric is considered greater than the cost of any path internal to the AS. Use of Type 2 external metrics assumes that routing between AS'es is the major cost of routing a packet, and eliminates the need for conversion of external costs to internal link state metrics.