Flooding, Static Routing and Dynamic Routing

Let us begin by understanding the concept of flooding.

Flooding

Flooding does not require any network information like topology, load condition and cost of different paths.

Here, every incoming packet to a node is sent out on every outgoing line except the one it arrived on.

In this case all possible routes between Source and Destination will be tried. If a path exists a packet will always get through.

Since routes are tried, we can see at least one route which is the shortest.

All nodes that are indirectly or directly connected are visited.

Some limitations include generation of large numbers of duplicate packets. Also, we must use a suitable damping mechanism.

Some of the advantages of flooding are it is highly robust and it always chooses the shortest path.

Static Routing

Static Routing is also called non-adaptive routing.

Here the routing table is not changed unless the network administrator changes or modifies them manually.

Static routing does not use complex routing algorithms and hence it provides high or more security than the dynamic routing.

The route in static routing is user defined. We can see that static routing is manual. Static routing is mainly implemented in small networks.

Here failure of link can disrupt the rerouting. Here we can see that additional resources are not required.

Dynamic Routing

Dynamic routing is also called adaptive routing. It changes the routing table according to the change in topology.

Dynamic routing uses complex routing algorithms.

We can see that it does not provide high security like the static routing.

It is usually implemented in large networks. This type of routing is automated.

In the case of dynamic routing additional resources are required and failure of a link does not cause any interrupt to the rerouting.