DYNAMIC ROUTING PROTOCOLS

• Functions of a Router
1. Best Path Selections
2. Forwarding packets to destination
• Autonomous System is a group of routers under the control of a single
authority.
• Interior Gateway Routing Protocols (IGP)
• Used for routing inside an autonomous system & used to route within
the individual networks themselves.
• Examples: RIP, EIGRP, OSPF
• Exterior Routing Protocols (EGP)
• Used for routing between autonomous systems
• Example: BGPv4
 Classifying Routing Protocols
Dynamic routing protocols are grouped according to characteristics.
• Advantages of static routing
• Easy to configure
• No extra resources are needed
• More secure
• Disadvantages of static routing
• Network changes require manual reconfiguration
• Does not scale well in large topologies
• Advantages of implementing summary and default routes.
• Summary static routes can be used to help minimize the number of
static routes in the routing table.
 Dynamic Routing Protocols
• Functions of Dynamic Routing Protocols:
• Dynamically share information between routers.
• Automatically update routing table when topology changes.
• Determine best path to a destination.

sh ip route
• The purpose of a dynamic routing protocol is to:
• Discover remote networks
• Maintaining up-to-date routing information
• Choosing the best path to destination networks
• Ability to find a new best path if the current path is no longer available
 Distance Vector Routing Vs Link State Routing
Basis for comparison Distance vector routing Link state routing
Bellman ford (RIP)
Algorithm Dijsktra
DUAL (EIGRP)
Topology information from the
neighbor point of view. Complete information on the
Network view
Routes are advertised as vectors network topology
of distance & direction.
Best path calculation Based on the least number of
Based on the cost
(Metric) hops (RIP), Bandwidth (EIGRP)
Updates Full routing table Link state updates
Updates frequency Periodic updates Triggered updates
CPU and memory Low utilization Intensive
Requires a trained network
Simplicity High simplicity
administrator
Convergence time Moderate Fast
Updates On broadcast On multicast
• Convergence is defined as when all routers’ routing tables are at a state
of consistency
• all routers in the network have consistent and correct information
about how to reach destination network.
 Network Discovery
• Convergence must be reached before a network is
considered completely operable
• Speed of achieving convergence consists of 2
interdependent categories
-Speed of broadcasting routing information
-Speed of calculating routes
• Classful routing protocols
• Do NOT send subnet
mask in routing updates

• Classless routing protocols

• Do send subnet mask in
• routing updates.
 Routing Protocols Metrics
• Metric
• A value used by a routing protocol to determine which routes are
better than others.
• Metrics is used when only one routing protocol is configured and
there are multiple paths to reach the destination. Metric is a value
used by a routing protocol to determine which routes are better
than others.
 Routing Protocols Metrics
• Metrics used in IP routing protocols
• Bandwidth
• Cost
• Delay
• Hop count
• Load
• Reliability
 Routing Protocols Metrics
• The Metric Field in the Routing Table
• Metric used for each routing protocol
• -RIP - hop count (The cost of metric in this protocol is hop count
which is number of networks which need to be passed to reach
destination. Here infinity is defined by a fixed number which is 16
it means that using a Rip, network cannot have more than 15
hops.)
• -IGRP & EIGRP - Bandwidth (used by default), Delay (used by
default), Load, Reliability
• -IS-IS & OSPF – Cost, Bandwidth (Cisco’s implementation)
metric
• Load balancing
• This is the ability of a router to distribute packets among multiple same
cost paths

PC2 -> PC5

1. R2 -> R1
2. R2 -> R3
 Administrative Distance of a Route
• Purpose of a metric
• It is a calculated value used to determine the best path to a destination
• Purpose of Administrative Distance
• It’s a numeric value that specifies the preference of a particular route. If a
router has multiple routing protocols in its routing table, it will select the
route with the lowest AD
• When two or more protocols are used to enable routing on a router, the
routing protocol with least administrative distance value is used as the best
routing protocol.
• Identifying the Administrative Distance (AD) in a routing table
• It is the first number in the brackets in the routing table
Administrative Distance of a Route
Distance Vector and Link-State
Routing Protocol
 Basic operation of Routing Information Protocol
(RIP) and Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (IGRP)
RIP and IGRP are distance vector routing
protocols characterized by periodic
updates that are broadcast to directly
connected neighbors. The entire routing
table is sent in the update.
 Features of RIP
1. RIP is a dynamic routing protocol that uses hop count as a routing metric
to find the best path between the source and the destination network.
2. It is a distance-vector routing protocol that has an AD value of 120.
3. Updates of the network are exchanged periodically.
4. Updates (routing information) are always broadcast.
5. Full routing tables are sent in updates.
6. Routers always trust routing information received from neighbor routers.
This is also known as Routing on rumors.
7. There are three versions of routing information protocol – RIP
Version1, RIP Version2, and RIPng.
 RIPv1
Advantages of RIPv1
• Easy to configure.
• Less overhead.
• No complexity.
Disadvantage of RIPv1
• Bandwidth utilization is very high as broadcast for every 30 seconds.
• It works only on hop count.
• It is not scalable as hop count is only 15. If there will be requirement of
more routers in the network it would be a problem .
• Convergence is very slow, wastes a lot of time in finding alternate path.
 RIPv2
Advantages of RIPv2
• It is a standardized protocol.
• It is VLSM compliant.
• Provides fast convergence.
• It sends triggered updates when the network changes.
• RIPv2 multicasts the entire routing table to all adjacent routers at the
address 224.0.0.9, as opposed to RIPv1 which uses broadcast
(255.255.255.255).
Disadvantage of RIPv2
• Max hop count of 15, due to the ‘count-to-infinity’ vulnerability.
• Exchanges entire table with all neighbours every 30 seconds (except in the
case of a triggered update).
 RIPv1 vs RIPv2
RIPv1 RIPv2

RIPv2 is a classless protocol and it supports variable-

length subnet masking (VLSM), CIDR, and route
RIPv1 uses what is known as classful routing summarization

RIPv1 routing updates are broadcasted RIPv2 routing updates are multicasted

RIPv1 has no authentication RIPv2 supports authentication

RIPv2 does carry mask in updates, so it supports for

RIPv1 does not carry mask in updates VLSM

RIPv2 can be useful in small, flat networks or at the

RIPv1 is an older, no longer much used routing edge of larger networks because of its simplicity in
protocol configuration and usage
 Four main timers in RIP

1. Update timer – 30sec (used to time when to send the next update)
2. Invalid timer – 180sec (used to mark a route as invalid by setting
the metric to 16 if an update has not been received to refresh an
existing route after 180 seconds. counts how long it has been since
the last update for a route)
3. Holddown timer – 180sec (the amount of time an unreachable
route is in hold-down)
4. Flush timer - 240sec (time until a route is removed from the routing
table)
 Routing loops

• A condition in which a packet is continuously transmitted within a

series of routers without ever reaching its destination. Routing
loops can occur when inconsistent routing tables are not updated
due to slow convergence in a changing network.
Five techniques distance vector routing protocols use to
prevent routing loops

1. Defining maximum metric to prevent count to infinity. Once a router counts to16, it
marks the route as unreachable.
2. Holddown timers - Holddown timers allow a router to not accept any changes to a
route for a specified period of time. Allows routing updates to propagate through
network with the most current information.
3. Split horizon - A router should not advertise a network through the interface from
which the update came.
4. Route poisoning or poison reverse - The rule states that once a router learns of an
unreachable route through an interface, advertise it as unreachable back through
the same interface
5. Triggered updates - A triggered update is a routing table update that is sent
immediately in response to a routing change. Triggered updates do not wait for
update timers to expire.
 EIGRP (Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol)

• EIGRP is called a hybrid or advanced distance vector protocol and

most of the rules that apply to RIP also apply to EIGRP:
1. Split Horizon
2. Route Poisoning
3. Poison Reverse
 EIGRP routing process

• EIGRP routers will start sending hello

packets to other routers, if you send
hello packets and you receive them
you will become neighbors.
• EIGRP neighbors will exchange routing
information which will be saved in the
topology table.
• The best path from the topology table
will be copied in the routing table.
 Link-state routing process
•Each routers learns about its own directly
connected networks.
•Link state routers exchange hello packet to “meet”
other directly connected link state routers.
•Each router builds its own Link State Packet (LSP)
which includes information about neighbors such as
neighbor ID, link type, & bandwidth.
•After the LSP is created the router floods it to all
neighbors who then store the information and then
forward it until all routers have the same
information.
•Once all the routers have received all the LSPs, the
routers then construct a topological map of the
network which is used to determine the best routes
to a destination.
•Link state routing protocols used SPF algorithm.
Advantages of link-state routing protocol compared to distance
vector protocol

• Use of a topological map, SPF tree of the network.

• Faster convergence (EIGRP is an exception).
• No periodic updates unlike some distance vector routing
protocols.
• Specific LSP flooded only when there is a change in the
topology.
 Summary
• Dynamic routing protocols fulfill the following functions
• -Dynamically share information between routers
• -Automatically update routing table when topology
changes
• -Determine best path to a destination
• Routing protocols are grouped as either
• -Interior gateway protocols (IGP)
• -Exterior gateway protocols(EGP)
• Types of IGPs include
• -Classless routing protocols - these protocols include
subnet mask in routing updates
• -Classful routing protocols - these protocols do not include
subnet mask in routing update
 Summary
• Metrics are used by dynamic routing protocols to calculate the best
path to a destination.
• Administrative distance is an integer value that is used to indicate a
router’s “trustworthiness”
• Components of a routing table include:
• -Route source
• -Administrative distance
• -Metric