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Introducing OSPF
Dynamic Routing Protocols
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17.2 Introducing OSPF

Dynamic Routing Protocols 

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A routing protocol is a set of processes, algorithms, and messages that are used to
exchange routing information. Routing information is used to populate the routing table
with the best paths to destinations in the network. As routers learn of changes to
network reachability, this information is dynamically passed onto other routers.

A dynamic routing protocol has these purposes:

 Discovering remote networks

 Maintaining up-to-date routing information
 Choosing the best path to destination networks
 Finding a new best path if the current path is no longer available
All routing protocols have the same purpose: to learn about remote networks and to
quickly adapt whenever there is a change in the topology. The method that a routing
protocol uses to accomplish this purpose depends upon the algorithm that it uses and
the operational characteristics of the protocol. The operations of a dynamic routing
protocol vary, depending on the type of routing protocol, and on the routing protocol
itself.

Although routing protocols provide routers with up-to-date routing tables, they put
additional demands on the memory and processing power of the router. First, the
exchange of route information adds overhead that consumes network bandwidth. Even
though this is almost never an issue in the networks today, in rare cases this overhead
might be a problem, particularly where low-bandwidth links are used between routers.
Second, after the router receives the route information, protocols such as Enhanced
Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP) and OSPF process it extensively to offer
information to the routing table. So, the routers that use these protocols must have
sufficient processing capacity to implement the algorithms of the protocol and to perform
timely packet routing and forwarding.

An autonomous system (AS), otherwise known as a routing domain, is a collection of

routers under a common administration, such as an internal company network or an
Internet service provider (ISP) network. Because the internet is based on the AS
concept, the following two types of routing protocols are required:

 IGP: An IGP routing protocol is used to exchange routing information within an

AS. EIGRP, Intermediate System-to-Intermediate System (IS-IS), OSPF, and the
legacy routing protocol, Routing Information Protocol (RIP) are examples of IGPs
for IP version 4 (IPv4).
 EGP: An Exterior Gateway Protocol (EGP) routing protocol is used to route
between autonomous systems. Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is the EGP used
today for IPv4.
Within an AS, most IGP routing can be classified as distance vector or link-state routing:

 Distance vector: The distance vector routing approach determines the direction

(vector) and distance (such as router hops) to any link in the internetwork. Some
distance vector protocols periodically send complete routing tables to all
connected neighbors. In large networks, these routing updates can become very
large, causing significant traffic on the links. The only information that a router
knows about a remote network is the distance or metric to reach this network and
the path or interface to use to get there. Distance vector routing protocols do not
have an actual map of the network topology. RIP is an example of a distance
vector routing protocol while EIGRP is an advanced distance vector routing
protocol that provides additional functionality.
 Link state: The link-state approach, which uses the shortest path first (SPF)
algorithm, creates an abstract of the exact topology of the entire internetwork, or
at least of the partition in which the router is situated. A link-state routing protocol
is like having a complete map of the network topology. A link-state router uses
the link-state information to create a topology map and to select the best path to
all destination networks in the topology. The OSPF and IS-IS protocols are
examples of link-state routing protocols.
Routing protocols can also be classified as classful or classless:

 Classless routing protocol: RIP version 2 (RIPv2), EIGRP, OSPF, IS-IS and

BGP are classless routing protocols and can be considered second-generation
protocols because they are designed to address the limitations of classful routing
protocols. A classless routing protocol is a protocol that advertises subnet mask
information in the routing updates for the networks advertised to neighbors. As a
result, this feature enables the protocols to support discontiguous networks
(where subnets of the same major network are separated by a different major
network) and Variable Length Subnet Masking (VLSM). This allows the routers to
exchange routing information for subnets (such as 10.1.1.0/24) as well as for
major networks (for example, 10.0.0.0/8). In the following figure, when routers R1
and R3 send routing advertisements to router R2, they include the subnet mask
in the updates (10.1.1.0/24 and 10.2.2.0/24), so R2 learns about those specific
subnets.

 Classful routing protocol: Classful routing protocols such as RIP version 1

(RIPv1) and Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (IGRP) are legacy protocols and
not used today. They do not advertise the subnet mask information within the
routing updates. Therefore, only one subnet mask can be used within a major
network; thus VLSM and discontiguous networks are not supported.
The concept of route summarization plays a really important role when using dynamic
routing protocols, because it optimizes the number of routing updates exchanged
between the routers in the routing domain. The purpose of route summarization is to
aggregate multiple routes into one route advertisement. For example, if Router A knows
about all of the subnets 10.1.0.0/24, 10.1.1.0/24, 10.1.2.0/24 and so on all the way up to
10.1.255.0/24, then instead of sending all of these routes to its neighbors, you could
configure it to send the summary route 10.1.0.0/16. In this case, Router A is telling its
neighbors that it knows how to get to all networks that have the same first 16 bits as
10.1.0.0, in other words that start with “10.1”.

All classless routing protocols support manual route summarization. Some of these
protocols have autosummarization at the major network boundary, to the classful
network address, on by default. For example, assume Router A has autosummarization
on and it knows about all of the subnets 10.1.0.0/24, 10.1.1.0/24, 10.1.2.0/24 and so on
all the way up to 10.1.255.0/24. In this case Router A would automatically send the
10.0.0.0/8 route to any of its neighbors that are in another major network.

This automatic summarization of a classless routing protocol like EIGRP can be a

problem if your subnets are discontiguous, meaning the 10.1.x.x subnets are separated
from the 10.2.x.x subnets by a different classful network such as 172.16.0.0. To stop
this from happening, automatic route summarization must be disabled with the no auto-
summary command under EIGRP. The subnets could then be manually summarized
with the /16 mask. Remember, the automatic summarization would not even occur if all
subnets are in the 10.0.0.0 network.

OSPF does not know the concept of autosummarization; hence, you must manually
summarize the routes that should be advertised to neighbor routers, otherwise all
subnets will be sent separately and may result in large routing tables in the receiving
routers. As of IOS release 15, EIGRP does not have autosummarization on by default;
in older IOS versions autosummarization was on by default. EIGRP’s
autosummarization feature can be disabled by using the  no auto-summary  command.

Classful routing protocols do not support manual route summarization and perform only
autosummarization.

Content Review Question

Correct
Which three dynamic routing protocols are considered classless? (Choose three.)


IS-IS


RIP


IGRP


RIPv2
 
EIGRP
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