2011 First International Conference on Informatics and Computational Intelligence

Performance Analysis of Dynamic Routing Protocol EIGRP and OSPF in IPv4 and
IPv6 Network

Chandra Wijaya
Parahyangan Catholic University
Bandung, Indonesia
e-mail: [email protected]

Abstract—OSPF (Open Shortest Path First) and EIGRP using static routing. In addition to save router resources, the
(Enhanced Interior Gateway Protocol) are routing protocol configuration is not too difficult. When the computer
which is a member of IGP (Interior Gateway Protocol). OSPF network is larger, the use of static routing will be harder for
and EIGRP will distribute routing information between administrators who are responsible to manage the routing
routers in the same autonomous system. This research will find tables. The number of entries in the routing table and also the
how routing protocol works and compare those dynamic accuracy of each entry is a key factor for the performance of
routing protocols in IPv4 and IPv6 network. This research will the computer network. If there are changes that occur in the
simulate some network topology and shows that EIGRP are
topology, routing tables must be updated soon. So the
much better than OSPF in many different topology.
packets sent on the network is not discarded because of an
error in the routing table.
I. INTRODUCTION The classification of routing protocol is depicted in Fig. 1
below. Where there are some dynamic routing protocol can
Nowadays, computers have become tools which can not be used to configuring routing tables in the router. There is
be separated from our daily lives. From the simple task, up to Interior Gateway Protocol (IGP) than should be used for the
the need to socialize using social networking sites such as routers in same domain network such as Routing Information
facebook, twitter, etc. Computers that had not connected Protocol (RIP), Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol
with the other computers or just stand alone, now become a (EIGRP), Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) and IS-IS
necessity to connect with the other computers. Whether it be (Intermediate System – Intermediate System). And for the
connected through a local area network (LAN), or using a routers in different domain network, Exterior Gateway
modem, while internet connections are becoming Protocol (EGP) can be used such as Border Gateway
increasingly affordable price to everyone. Protocol (BGP).
Initially, the computers in the network are using IPv4 For the router in the same domain network, there are two
addressing method. So each computer can communicate with types of dynamic routing protocols that can be used on
the other using it’s IP address as the identity while connected computer networks, namely distance vector and link-state
to the network. However, IPv4 has much limitations, such of routing protocols. Both types of routing protocols has
the number of address that can be used and some much advantages and disadvantages. For the distance vector type,
address can not be employed because it has been reserved EIGRP (Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol) will
for some purpose. Because of limited IPv4 addresses that can be used. And for the link-state type, OSPF (Open Shortest
be used, then the developing IPv6 has been done and there is Path First) will be used. Both of these dynamic routing
much number of ip addresses can be used compared to IPv4 protocols can be used in both IPv4 and IPv6 networks.
ip address.
As long as a number of ip addresses can be used, the
routing configuration is required so that these computers can
communicate with each other even in different network.
Misconfiguration of the routing table can cause problems
that can interfere the data transmissions such as packet loss
and delay. The worst problem that can happen is the loss of
important information that is sent. This disorder can occur
because the improper configuration of routing tables on the
routers, the router device is down, or loss connections
between routers.
There are two different way to configure routing tables in
the router. The routing tables on the routers can be
configured by using static routing or dynamic routing. For a
computer network that is not too large, it is advantageous to

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DOI 10.1109/ICI.2011.64
 only the information about the direction and the interface
where the packet will be forwarded.
One of distance vector routing protocol is Enhanced
Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP). EIGRP is a
CISCO proprietary protocol, which is an improved version
of the interior gateway routing protocol (IGRP). Route
computation in EIGRP is done through Diffusion Update
Algorithm (DUAL). Fig. 2 depict the protocol structure of
EIGRP packet.

Figure 2. OSPF packet format

Metrics in EIGRP is determined by computing

bandwidth, reliability, delay and load for each link connected
to the router [2]. The composition metrics are shown in the
Figure 3 below, where K1 = 1, K2 = 0, K3 = 1, K4 = 0, and
K5 = 0.
Figure 1. The classification of routing protocol

II. INTERIOR GATEWAY PROTOCOL

There are two dynamic routing protocol will be explained
in this paper. First is Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Figure 3. EIGRP composite metric
Protocol (EIGRP), which is a distance vector routing
protocol. And the second is Open Shortest Path First (OSPF), Some advantages using EIGRP are as follow:
which is a link state routing protocol. • Easy to configure.
A. Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP) • Loop free routes.
Distance vector routing protocol present routes as a • Keeps backup path to the destination network.
function of distance and direction vectors where the distance • Convergence time is low and bandwidth utilization .
is represented as hop count and direction is represented as • Support Variable Length Subnet Mask (VLSM) and
exit interface. [1] Classless Inter Domain Routing (CIDR).
In the distance vector routing protocol, Bellman-Ford • Supports authentication.
algorithm is used for the path calculation where router take
the position of the vertices and the links. For each The disadvantages of using EIGRP are as follow:
destination, a specific distance vector is maintained for all • Considered as Cisco proprietary routing protocol.
the router joined the network. The distance vector consist of • Routers from other vendor are not able to utilize
destination ID, shortest distance and next hop. Here each EIGRP.
node passes a distance vector to its neighbor and informs
about the shortest paths.
B. Open Shortest Path First (OSPF)
Each router depends on its neighboring routers for
collecting the routing information. The router are responsible Link-state routing protocol is also known as shortest path
for exchanging the distance vector. When a router in the routing protocol, because it computes the best path in the
network receives the advertisement of the lowest cost from network which is the shortest path available from the source
its neighbors, it then adds this entry to the routing table. network to the destination network. Each router joined the
In distance vector routing protocol, the router do not routing domain, will held a link state database which consist
know the information of the entire path. The router knows of a router list in the network [3]. Every router has the same

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database. The database then is used to describe to network • OSPF always determine the loop free routes.
topology. • If any changes occur in the network it updates fast.
Each router in the same domain will run the algorithm • Low bandwidth utilization.
using their link-state database. Firstly, they will build a tree • Support multiple routes for a single destination
with each router as the root. Then, the tree consist of shortest network.
path available to each router in that network. Other router • OSPF is based on cost of the interface.
which is joined the network will be known as leave. • Support Variable Length Subnet Mask (VLSM)
Link-state advertisement (LSA) is responsible for the
routing information exchange between routers. Neighbour The disadvantages of OSPF are:
router information can be known each time LSA is received. • Difficult to configure
LSA is sent by each routing using flooding method. Each
• More memory requirements.
router floods its LSA to the network, and then each router
will received the LSA and processed it. Everytime a network
topology changed, router will send LSA to the network. So III. SIMULATION
the other routers will know about the network topology
changes soon. Simulations are performed using GNS3 and Packet
Dijkstra algorithm is used to computes the shortest path Tracer software. In this paper, there are 3 topologies to be
from each router to other router in the same routing domain. simulated. Each topology consist of three routers and each
Dijkstra algorithm used cost for each link available in the router is connected to several personal computer through
router for the computation. network switch. Each network topology will be simulated
OSPF is a routing protocol developed by Interior using IPv4 and IPv6 addressing mode.
Gateway Protocol (IGP) working group of the Internet In the first topology, each router is connected to other
Engineering Task Force (IETF) for Internet Protocol (IP) router through network switch. This topology is later to be
networks. OSPF is a link state routing protocol that is used to called multi-access network. In the second topology, each
distribute routing information within a single Autonomous router is connected to other router through serial connection.
System (AS) [4]. This topology is later to be called point-to-point network.
OSPF packet header is shown in the Fig 4 below. And in the last topology, each router is connected to other
router through frame relay connection. This topology is later
to be called Non-broadcast Multiaccess network (NBMA).
The topology will be shown in these figure below.

Figure 4. OSPF packet header

Figure 6. IPv4 Multiaccess network
OSPF has five different packet type. Each packet has a
specific purpose in OSPF process. Below is OSPF packet
types:
1. Hello packet
2. Database description
3. Link state request packet
4. Link state update
5. Link state acknowledgement packet

The path cost of an interface in OSPF is called metric.

The metric is calculated on the basis of bandwidth of each
Figure 7. IPv6 Multiaccess network
interface. The calculation is shown in figure 5 below.

Figure 5. OSPF metric calculation

Advantages of using OSPF routing protocol are:

• OSPF is not a CISCO proprietary protocol.

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 Figure 8. IPv4 point-to-point network Figure 13. R2 routing table in multiaccess IPv4 network topology

Figure 9. IPv6 point-to-point network

Figure 14. R3 routing table in multiaccess IPv4 network topology

Shown below is the routing table from each router for the
point-to-point network topology in the IPv6 environment
using OSPF as the dynamic routing protocol.

Figure 10. IPv4 NBMA network

Figure 15. R1 routing table in point-to-point IPv6 network topology

Figure 11. IPv6 NBMA network

IV. ANALYSIS

A. Routing table analysis

The routing table in each router is shown in the figure Figure 16. R2 routing table in point-to-point IPv6 network topology
below. This is the routing table in each router for the multi-
access network topology in the IPv4 environment using
EIGRP as the dynamic routing protocol.

Figure 17. R3 routing table in point-to-point IPv6 network topology

Figure 12. R1 routing table in multiaccess IPv4 network topology

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B. Metric Analysis
EIGRP metric analysis is shown as follow:

bandwidth = (107 / 105) x 256 = 25600

delay = [(100 / 10) + (100 / 10) ] x 256 = 5120
Metrik = [1 x 25600 + 1 x 5120] = 30720

bandwidth = (107 / 105) x 256 = 25600

delay = [(100 / 10)+(100 / 10)+(100 / 10)] x 256 = 7680
Metric = [1 x 25600 + 1 x 7680] = 33280

OSPF metric analysis is shown as follow:

Metric = (108 / 108) + (108 / 108)

=1+1=2

C. Packet Loss Analysis

Figure 19. Packet Loss in IPv6 Network using OSPF
Packet loss simulation results is shown in the figure 18
and 19. In the figure below, there is some packet that is
succeed to arrive to the destination. Packet loss is indicated D. Shortest Route Analysis
with "Destination host unreachable". Packet loss occurs The shortest route used by the router is shown in figure
after the route in the routing table is discarded, or interfaces 20 and 21. In the figure below, the route used by the router
on one router is turned off. is the shortest route that is available. This proves that the
routing protocol will cause the packets to be forwarded
using the shortest route.

Figure 18. Packet Loss in IPv4 Network using EIGRP

Figure 20. Shortest Route in IPv4 network using OSPF

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 3000
2000
Multiaccess
1000
Point-to-point
0
NBMA
EIGRP OSPF EIGRP OSPF
IPv4 IPv4 IPv6 IPv6

Figure 23. Total packet sent when routing information exchange process

V. CONCLUSION
From the simulation and analysis performed, some
conclusions can be drawn:
• Packet sents in an IPv4 environment is smaller than
the packet sents in an IPv6 environment. This is
Figure 21. Shortest Route in IPv6 network using EIGRP
because in the IPv6 network, addressing is much
larger than in IPv4. IPv4 header size is 20 bytes,
E. Packet Sent Analysis whereas in IPv6 is 40 bytes.
Using wireshark in figure 22 below, shown is the • The number of packet loss is smaller when using
captured packet in routing information exchange process. EIGRP as compared with OSPF. Whether it's using
an IPv4 addressing or IPv6 addressing. This is
because EIGRP uses DUAL algorithm that includes
a successor when a route is lost. By using EIGRP,
the packet loss ranging from 1 to 3. Meanwhile,
when using OSPF, packet loss ranging from 2 to 4.
• EIGRP packets sent has a smaller size compared to
the packets sent by OSPF. This is due to data
transmission process performed by the OSPF is more
often.
• The route chosen by the router is the route with the
least metric. This can be seen from the results of a
traceroute performed on several PCs.

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