This Type LSA has always been confusing to many people. This LSA describes the metric that the ABR uses to reach the respective ASBR. This LSA contains the router-ID of the ASBR and the metric to reach it. ABRs generate type-4 LSAs based on the special “router routing” table which is visible when you issue the command show ip ospf border-routers. This command is the essense of the distance-vector OSPF behavior. During the inter-area path calculations, the ABR populates this table with “host” routing entries for every ABR and ASBR detected with the respective metrics. This table is never transferred to the main router routing table, but rather used for inter-area path computations and type-4 LSA generation. Effectively, the metrics in this table are used as metric offsets for the paths learned from ABRs and ASBRs.
Demystify and Simplify 