Welcome to Week 6

RIP OPERATION: Dealing With Failure

& RIP Refinements

Nasir Faruk, Ph.D.

Department of Telecommunication Science
University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Nigeria
Email: [email protected]
 Course content/Lecture Schedule
Lect. No. Date Topic
1 Week 1 General Overview of the Course and Course Requirements
2 Week 2 Introduction to Routing and Packet Forwarding.
3 Week 3 Static Routing and Dynamic Routing Protocols
4 Week 4 Distance Vector and Link State Routing Algorithms
5 Week 5 BUILDING and maintaining ROUTING TABLE using RIP
6 Week 6 (Test 1) Dealing With Failure & RIP Refinements
7 Week 7 RIPv1: Route Summarisation
8 Week 8 EIGRP
9 Week 9 Link-State Routing Protocols
10 Week 10 OSPF
11 Week 11 OSPF
12 Week 12 (Test 2) OSPF Packet Type, OSPF Adjacencies, Neighbor Establishment

P.S Topic Date Duration

No. Assigned

1 Introduction to Dynamic Routing Protocols Week 4 1 Week

2 BUILDING and maintaining ROUTING TABLE using RIP Week 8 1 week
2 Dealing With Failure & RIP Refinements, VLSM and CIDR Week 9 1 Week
4 Link-State Routing Protocols Week 11 1 week
2 5 OSPF Packet Type, OSPF Adjacencies, Neighbor Establishment Week 12 1 week
 Today’s Class
— In this week you will be introduce to:
— RIP Routing Table
— Dealing With Failure & RIP Refinements

3
 FLASH BACK_RIPv1 OPERATION
— Routing Information Protocol (RIP) was originally specified in RFC 1058. It has the following
key characteristics:
1) Hop count is used as the metric for path selection: Classical distance vector
routing protocol
2) If the hop count for a network is greater than 15, RIP cannot supply a route to
that network .i.e. Uses a cost of 16 for unreachable networks
3) Router subsequently floods routing table entries every 30 seconds by default.
4) No attempt to handshake with neighboring routers
5) Repetitions confirm continued reachability of routes (This may leads to looping?)
6) Broken routes not re-advertised by the router
7) On start-up, a router knows only about its directly connected networks
8) Requests routing table of adjacent routers (neighbours) to build up its own
routing table
9) Does not support VLSM means:
I. Router compares received information with its own routing information.
II. It records first-learnt path with lowest number of hops to remote network

4
 Dealing With Failure & RIP Refinements

qThe link between R1 and R3 breaks

thereby, updates from R3 could not
reach R1.
qThis implies that host on LAN1
cannot reach any host on LAN3.
qR1 uses 16 in the hop count for
LAN3 and LAN4 pending when other
updates from alternative routes
arrive.
qThe real question is: “How long does
it take for all routers to agree on the
revised network topology?”

5
 How would the problem solved?

— R1 would have to wait for updates

from R2 once updates from R2
reaches R1
— R1 will then updates its routing table
to include the alternative routes to
LAN3 and LAN4 as shown in the
Figure.
— Packets between R1 and R2 must now
travel through R2
— R2 sends routing information to R1
then, R1 change the cost of 16 to R2
as the next hop.
— All host connected to LAN1 would
send their packet via R2 to LAN3.

6
 PACKET LOOPING AND COUNT TO INFINITY
— What is a Routing Loop?
— A routing loop is a condition in which a packet is continuously transmitted within a series of
routers without ever reaching its intended destination network.
— A routing loop can occur when two or more routers have routing information that
incorrectly indicates that a valid path to an unreachable destination exists.
— The loop may be a result of:
o Incorrectly configured static routes
o Incorrectly configured route redistribution (redistribution is a process of handing the routing
information from one routing protocol to another routing protocol
o Inconsistent routing tables not being updated due to slow convergence in a changing network
o Incorrectly configured or installed discard routes

ü Routing loops are less of a problem with link-state routing protocols but can occur under certain
circumstances.
ü IP has a Time-to-Live (TTL)

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 COUNT TO INFINITY....

8
 WHAT ARE THE IMPLICATIONS
OF ROUTING LOOPS?
— A routing loop can have a devastating effect on a network,
resulting in degraded network performance or even a network
downtime.
— A routing loop can create the following conditions:
— Link bandwidth will be used for traffic looping back and forth between the
routers in a loop.
— A router's CPU will be strained due to looping packets.
— A router's CPU will be burdened with useless packet forwarding that will
negatively impact the convergence of the network.
— Routing updates may get lost or not be processed in a timely manner. These
conditions would introduce additional routing loops, making the situation
even worse.
— Packets may get lost

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 RIP REFINEMENTS

— These mechanisms include:

— Hold-down timers
— Defining a maximum metric to prevent count
to infinity
— Split horizon
— Route poisoning or poison reverse
— Triggered updates

10
 RIP TIMERS
1. INVALID TIMER. If an update has not been received to refresh an existing route after
180 seconds (the default), the route is marked as invalid by setting the metric to 16.
2. FLUSH TIMER. By default, the flush timer is set for 240 seconds, which is 60 seconds
longer than the invalid timer. When the flush timer expires, the route is removed from
the routing table
3. HOLD-DOWN TIMERS: Once a route is marked as unreachable, it must stay in
holddown long enough for all routers in the topology to learn about the unreachable
network. By default, the holddown timer is set for 180 seconds.

Stages of holddown time

§Routers ignore information about failed route for
a given period of time
–The hold-down interval
§This allows time for all routers to be brought up-
to-date about the failed route
§If the route is still available at end of hold-down
interval
–It is restored with an equal or higher
metric
§If the route is still unavailable
11 –It is flushed from routing table
 SPLIT HORIZON

— Routers do not advertise routes over interfaces on which

they were learnt:
— Prevents looping between neighbours
— Does not prevent larger loops

–R4 advertises LAN4 to R3.

–R3 receives the information and
updates its routing table.
–R3 then advertises the LAN 4 network
to R1 and R2,
–R3 does not advertise LAN 4 to R4
because the route originated from that
interface.
–R1 and R2 receives the information
and updates their routing table.
12 .
 TRIGGERED UPDATES AND
ROUTE POISONING
— 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.
— The detecting router immediately sends an update message to adjacent
routers.
— The receiving routers, in turn, generate triggered updates that notify their
neighbors of the change.
— Triggered updates are sent when one of the following occurs:
— An interface changes state (up or down)
— A route has entered (or exited) the "unreachable" state
— A route is installed in the routing table

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 TRIGGERED UPDATES AND ROUTE
POISONING cont....

§Topology change triggers

immediate update
–Rather than awaiting
next update timeout
§Route poisoning advertises
unreachable networks with
an infinite metric
–Often used in
conjunction with
triggered updates

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 Study Questions
The diagram in Figure 2 shows a company
internetwork comprising five site LANs, LAN1 –
LAN5, interconnected through five routers, R1 –
R5 and five wide area links, W1 – W5.
a. Explain how a distance vector routing protocol,
such as RIP, would build up the routing tables
for this internetwork. Start from the point
where all routers are switched on for the first
time and show the routing tables for R1, R2
and R3 once the network has converged.
b. The basic RIP algorithm suffers from the
problem known as count to infinity. Explain
this problem, using the example where R2
advertises slightly ahead of its two neighbours,
R1 and R3, and loses its connection to LAN2
just after it has advertised.
c. Using this example, explain how the count-to-
infinity is avoided using the additional routing
feature known as split horizon. Show the
routing tables for R1, R2 and R3 that result
from adding this feature to the version of RIP
15
running on the example internetwork.
 Further Reading
Topics that will NOT be
Author Chapters and main topics examined from these
sections
Forouzan 21 Network Layer: Delivery,
(4th edition) Forwarding and Routing

Tanenbaum
5.2 Routing Algorithms
(4th edition) Multicast Routing
(covered in 400 Level)

Stallings
12. Routing in Switched Networks
(7th edition)