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CCN A Routing 10

Routing loops occur when invalid routing information causes packets to continuously circulate the network. This is known as "counting to infinity." Distance vector routing protocols address this by defining a maximum metric or hop count. When the hop count exceeds the maximum, typically 15 or 16, the route is marked as unreachable or "infinity." This prevents endless looping by limiting how long invalid routes can be counted.

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62 views4 pages

CCN A Routing 10

Routing loops occur when invalid routing information causes packets to continuously circulate the network. This is known as "counting to infinity." Distance vector routing protocols address this by defining a maximum metric or hop count. When the hop count exceeds the maximum, typically 15 or 16, the route is marked as unreachable or "infinity." This prevents endless looping by limiting how long invalid routes can be counted.

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israelsisisisi
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© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
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Counting to Infinity The routing loop we just saw creates another problem, known as Counting to Infinity.

. This condition, called count to infinity, loops packets continuously around the network in spite of the fundamental fact that the destination network, Network 1, is down. While the routers are counting to infinity, the invalid information allows a routing loop to exist. Without countermeasures to stop the process, the distance vector (metric) of hop count increments each time the packet passes through another router. These packets loop through the network because of wrong information in the routing tables.

Solution to Counting to Infinity: Defining a Maximum metric Distance vector routing protocols remedy the problem by limiting the maximum number of hops for any route in the routing table. When the distance vector routing protocol has a route with a metric that is more than its maximum-value, it is denoted as infinity and the route is considered unreachable. For RIP the maximum-value is 15 (hops), infinity is 16 (hops). For IGRP the maximum-value 100 (hops), infinity is 101 (hops). IGRP uses bandwidth, delay, reliability and load for its metric in determining best path. IGRP does not use hop count as this metric. Hop count is only used by IGRP to stop the counting to infinity behavior. (more later)

Solution to Counting to Infinity: Defining a Maximum metric Remember that distance vector routing protocols like RIP, increment the metric (hop count) before sending the routing update to their adjacent routers. After incrementing the hop count, if the metric (hops) is less than 15, routing updates to other adjacent routes will receive a valid route for this network from this router. After incrementing the hop count, if the metric (hop count) is equal to 15, this router will be able to route packets to this network, 15 hops away, but routing updates to other adjacent routers will have the incremented hop count of 16 (infinity). - This means other routers cannot reach this network via this router. After incrementing the hop count, if the metric (hop count) is equal to 16,infinity, this router will not be able to route packets to this network. Routing updates to other adjacent routers will also have the hop count of 16 (infinity), which means they cannot reach this network via this router. There is another situation where the router itself will modify the hop count to infinity split horizon with poison reverse. Coming up next!

FAQs Defining a maximum-value


Q: Why does RIP use a hop count as the route metric, and why is its maximum value limited to 15? A: When RIP was designed and implemented, dynamic routing protocols were not widely used. Instead, networks relied mostly on static routing. RIP, even with its hop-count-metric which seems very poor to us today was quite a big improvement. Counting intermediate routes is the simplest method to measure the quality of routes. Setting the infinity value for the metric is always a problem of choosing between wider networks and faster convergence when the protocol starts counting. When RIP was invented, it seemed unlikely to have a network with the maximum diameter of more than 15 routers, so 16 was chosen as the infinity value. (Zinin, Cisco IP Routing)

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