[c-nsp] IS-IS Multiarea on 12.2 SR

[Jared Gillis]

Hi all,

I've been having quite a few adventures with IS-IS over the last few weeks and have finally hit a wall, so I'm hoping someone here can give me a hand. Basically, I need to build a network with IS-IS multiarea as described here: 
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/ps6599/products_data_sheet09186a00800e9780.html

I built up a small lab with 2600s running 12.3 and got it all working exactly as described in the docs and as I needed. I then tried to move that config to production, which is on 7606/Sup720 running 12.2 SRC, and the multiarea features did not function. That is, automatic redistribution of L1 routes into the L2 instance did not occur, nor did advertising of an L2 (default) route into the L1 domain occur. After doing some research, I found this 2007 c-nsp post:
http://puck.nether.net/pipermail/cisco-nsp/2007-May/040686.html
Paragraph 10: "TAC says that Integrated Multi-area IS-IS is not supported."
So, to test this out, I put 12.2 SR onto a 7204VXR in the lab (7606 in the lab is not possible for me at the moment), and inserted into my old 2600 lab, and saw the same behavior as on the 7606, which seems to support the old c-nsp post. The Cisco Feature Navigator (which is definitely not gospel) says that every version of 12.2 SR should support IS-IS multiarea. 
Does anyone have any conclusive information on this, have you ever been able to get IS-IS multiarea functioning on a 7606/Sup720? If there's some way we can make this functionality work on that platform, I am dying to find it.

Secondarily, if we can't have true IS-IS multiarea, we may be able to simulate it by manually redistributing from the L1 instances to the L2 instances, and setting default-information originate on the L1 instances. I attempted this in the lab, and while the commands are accepted and appear to be good, neither redist nor default origination is actually happening.
Does anyone have any suggestions on this front? Redist and default origination should "just work".

I'm happy to provide config snippets if needed. Any advice or help is highly appreciated.
Thanks!

-Jared