Routing Algorithms & Protocols

By Utkarsh Hathi

Routing
A process of selecting paths in a network to decide where to send the network traffic. In most subnets, packets require multiple hops to make the journey. Even in broadcast networks, routing is an issue if source and destination are not on the same network.

Routing Algorithm
Routing Algorithm is that part of the network layer software responsible for deciding which output line an incoming packet should be transmitted on. Overall performance of your network depends on the routing algorithms

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Routing Algorithm cant be changed, only protocols can be changed and as different protocols use different algorithms; changing it will change the algorithm as well. Now, we will have a look at the different routing protocols by the algorithms they support.

Routing Metric
A property of a route, consisting of a value used by algorithms to decide which route will perform better Different algorithms and protocols use different metrics and that can help us to decide which protocol to use by the type of services we want.

IGP and EGP

IGP Interior Gateway Protocol, also known as intra domain routing algorithm
Works within an autonomous system

Can be divided into three categories

Distance vector routing protocols Link state routing protocols Balanced Hybrid routing protocol

Autonomous system (IGP)

Distance Vector Routing Protocol

Requires that a router informs its neighbors of changes in topology periodically; can be also a triggered update if there is an instant change Each node maintains a table of minimum distances to every node. Examples: RIP V1 ,V2 and IGRP

Routing Information Protocol (V1)

As a distance vector routing protocol, it uses hop count as a metric. Limitation of 15 hops for a packet to travel to avoid the routing loops. Thus it limits the size of network it can support. Initially used to send update every 30 seconds but as networks became large it became difficult.

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RIP is not preferred choice for routing as its convergence time and scalability are poor compared to EIGRP, OSPF or IS-IS. RIP V1 doesnt support subnet while RIP V2 does thus supporting Classless Inter-domain routing.

IGRP
Interior gateway routing protocol (IGRP), another distance vector routing protocol invented by CISCO and increases the hop limit to 255 from 15 of RIP. Supports multiple metrics such as bandwidth, delay, load, MTU and reliability.

IGRP metric count

Link state routing protocol

Every node constructs the map of the connectivity to the network, in the form of a graph showing which nodes are connected to other nodes Then each node calculates the best logical path from it to every possible destination.

 Each node independently runs an algorithm over the map to determine the shortest path from itself to every other node in the network Uses link as the metric and will choose the path from where the packet will reach the fastest

Example:

Open Shortest Path First (OSPF)

The most widely-used interior gateway protocol (IGP) in large enterprise networks Support variable length Subnet masking supporting Classless Inter domain routing. Detects changes in the topology, such as link failures, very quickly and converges on a new loop-free routing structure within seconds

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OSPF Areas
Allows an AS to be split into different areas for ease of management and the routing information transmitted between areas is summarized to reduce network bandwidth consumption. Special area called the backbone

OSPF Computation
OSPF route computation OSPF route computation is described as follows: 1. Based on the network topology around itself, each router generates Link State Advertisements (LSA) and sends them to other routers in update packets. 2. Each OSPF router collects LSAs from other routers to compose a LSDB (Link State Database). An LSA describes the network topology around a router, so the LSDB describes the entire network topology of the AS. 3. Each router transforms the LSDB to a weighted directed graph, which actually reflects the topology architecture of the entire network. All the routers have the same graph. 4. Each router uses the SPF algorithm to compute a Shortest Path Tree that shows the routes to the nodes in the autonomous system. The router itself is the root of the tree.

Border Gateway Protocol

Was created to replace Exterior gateway protocol, that is used for interconnecting different autonomous systems. Most Internet service providers must use BGP to establish routing between one another

BGP between different AS

 The exchange of the routing information between two routers using BGP takes place in a session. For that BGP uses the services of TCP; when a TCP connection is created for BGP it lasts for long.

Types of BGP messages