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: chandra@it.unpar.ac.id

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

978-0-7695-4618-6/11 $26.00 © 2011 IEEE 355

DOI 10.1109/ICI.2011.64

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
Protocol (EIGRP), which is a distance vector routing
protocol. And the second is Open Shortest Path First (OSPF),
which is a link state routing protocol.
A. Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP)
Distance vector routing protocol present routes as a
function of distance and direction vectors where the distance
is represented as hop count and direction is represented as
exit interface. [1]
In the distance vector routing protocol, Bellman-Ford
algorithm is used for the path calculation where router take
the position of the vertices and the links. For each
destination, a specific distance vector is maintained for all
the router joined the network. The distance vector consist of
destination ID, shortest distance and next hop. Here each
node passes a distance vector to its neighbor and informs
about the shortest paths.
Each router depends on its neighboring routers for
collecting the routing information. The router are responsible
for exchanging the distance vector. When a router in the
network receives the advertisement of the lowest cost from
its neighbors, it then adds this entry to the routing table.
In distance vector routing protocol, the router do not
know the information of the entire path. The router knows
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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 3. EIGRP composite metric
Some advantages using EIGRP are as follow:
• Easy to configure.
• Loop free routes.
• Keeps backup path to the destination network.
• Convergence time is low and bandwidth utilization .
• Support Variable Length Subnet Mask (VLSM) and
Classless Inter Domain Routing (CIDR).
• Supports authentication.
The disadvantages of using EIGRP are as follow:
• Considered as Cisco proprietary routing protocol.
• Routers from other vendor are not able to utilize
EIGRP.
B. Open Shortest Path First (OSPF)
Link-state routing protocol is also known as shortest path
routing protocol, because it computes the best path in the
network which is the shortest path available from the source
network to the destination network. Each router joined the
routing domain, will held a link state database which consist
of a router list in the network [3]. Every router has the same
database. The database then is used to describe to network
topology.
Each router in the same domain will run the algorithm
using their link-state database. Firstly, they will build a tree
with each router as the root. Then, the tree consist of shortest
path available to each router in that network. Other router
which is joined the network will be known as leave.
Link-state advertisement (LSA) is responsible for the
routing information exchange between routers. Neighbour
router information can be known each time LSA is received.
LSA is sent by each routing using flooding method. Each
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
the other routers will know about the network topology
changes soon.
Dijkstra algorithm is used to computes the shortest path
from each router to other router in the same routing domain.
Dijkstra algorithm used cost for each link available in the
router for the computation.
OSPF is a routing protocol developed by Interior
Gateway Protocol (IGP) working group of the Internet
Engineering Task Force (IETF) for Internet Protocol (IP)
networks. OSPF is a link state routing protocol that is used to
distribute routing information within a single Autonomous
System (AS) [4].
OSPF packet header is shown in the Fig 4 below.
• OSPF always determine the loop free routes.
• If any changes occur in the network it updates fast.
• Low bandwidth utilization.
• Support multiple routes for a single destination
network.
• OSPF is based on cost of the interface.
• Support Variable Length Subnet Mask (VLSM)
The disadvantages of OSPF are:
• Difficult to configure
• More memory requirements.
III. SIMULATION
Simulations are performed using GNS3 and Packet
Tracer software. In this paper, there are 3 topologies to be
simulated. Each topology consist of three routers and each
router is connected to several personal computer through
network switch. Each network topology will be simulated
using IPv4 and IPv6 addressing mode.
In the first topology, each router is connected to other
router through network switch. This topology is later to be
called multi-access network. In the second topology, each
router is connected to other router through serial connection.
This topology is later to be called point-to-point network.
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

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
with "Destination host unreachable". Packet loss occurs
after the route in the routing table is discarded, or interfaces
on one router is turned off.
Figure 19. Packet Loss in IPv6 Network using OSPF
D. Shortest Route Analysis
The shortest route used by the router is shown in figure
20 and 21. In the figure below, the route used by the router
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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Figure 21. Shortest Route in IPv6 network using EIGRP
E. Packet Sent Analysis
Using wireshark in figure 22 below, shown is the
captured packet in routing information exchange process.
Figure 22. Packet captured in routing information exchange process
Total packets sent by OSPF and EIGRP can be seen in
figure 23. EIGRP sends a smaller number of packets
compared to OSPF. And the use of IPv6 addressing will
cause a larger size packet delivery compared to using IPv4
addressing. This is due to the size of the IPv6 header is
greater than the size of the header in IPv4, because IPv6
provides much number of addressing than IPv4.
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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
because in the IPv6 network, addressing is much
larger than in IPv4. IPv4 header size is 20 bytes,
whereas in IPv6 is 40 bytes.
• The number of packet loss is smaller when using
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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