REPUBLIQUE DU CAMEROUN REPUBLIC OF CAMEROON

Paix –Travail –Patrie Peace - Work- Fatherland

******** ********

MINISTERE DE
MINISTERE DE L´ENSEIGNEMENT
L´ENSEIGNEMENT MINISTRY
MINISTRY OF
OF HIGHER
HIGHER EDUCATION
EDUCATION

` SUPERIEURE
SUPERIEURE *********
*********
******** SIANTOU
******** SIANTOU HIGHER
HIGHER INSTITUTE
INSTITUTE OF
OF
TECHNOLOGY
TECHNOLOGY AND INDUSTRY
AND INDUSTRY

INSTITUTE UNIVERSITE
INSTITUTE UNIVERSITE SIANTOU
SIANTOU

DEPARTMENT
DEPARTMENT OF
OF COMPUTER
COMPUTER ENGINEERING
ENGINEERING

DEPARTEMENT D’INGENIERIE
DEPARTEMENT D’INGENIERIE
INFORMATIQUE
INFORMATIQUE
ROUTING IN DATA NETWORKS AND INTERNET
ROUTING (Part IV)

COURSE NAME: HIGH SPEED COMMUNICATION NETWORKS

BACHELORS DEGREE

PRESENTED BY:

MANDENG NOELLE ESTELLE (TEL)

Course Supervisor:

Mr ATEH

ACADEMIC YEAR: 2022/2023

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Table des matières
................................................................................................................................................... 1

I. CHARACTERISATION OF OPTIMAL ROUTING ........................................................ 3

A. HISTORY .................................................................................................................... 3

B. TERMINOLOGIES ..................................................................................................... 3

C. TECHNOLOGY .......................................................................................................... 4

1. Internet routing......................................................................................................... 4

2. Optimal Routing .............................................................................................................. 4

3. Optimality Principle ................................................................................................. 5

4. Characterisation ....................................................................................................... 5

II. INTERIOR AND EXTERIOR ROUTING PROTOCOLS ................................................ 6

A. INTERIOR ROUTING PROTOCOLS ....................................................................... 7

1. Routing Information Protocol (RIP) ........................................................................ 7

2. Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) ............................................................................. 8

OSPF versus RIP ............................................................................................................ 9

3. Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (IGRP) ............................................................. 9

4. Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP) .......................................... 9

B. EXTERIOR ROUTING PROTOCOLS .................................................................... 10

1. Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) ........................................................................... 10

III. SHORTCOMINGS OF OPTIMAL ROUTING ............................................................ 11

IV. APPLICATIONS OF OPTIMAL ROUTING PROTOCOLS ....................................... 12

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 I. CHARACTERISATION OF OPTIMAL ROUTING

A. HISTORY

The early days of the internet involved manual routing of packets between networks. In the
1970s, the first automated routing protocols, namely Routing Information Protocol (RIP) and
Open Shortest Path First (OSPF), were developed. Since then, several routing protocols such
as Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), and Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol
(EIGRP) have been developed. The first routing algorithm was developed in 1964. Since then,
many routing algorithms have been developed, including shortest path algorithms, link-state
algorithms, and distance-vector algorithms.

B. TERMINOLOGIES

 Routing Protocol: A set of rules that determine how routers communicate

with each other to exchange routing information.
 Metrics: Routing metrics are the values or criteria that routing protocols
use to compare and select the best routes among multiple options.
 IGP: Interior Gateway Protocol
 EGP: Exterior Gateway Protocol
 BGP: Border gateway protocol
 EIGRP: Enhanced interior gateway Routing protocol
 OSPF: Open shortest path protocol
 RIP: Routing Information Protocol

 AS: Autonomous System

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 C. TECHNOLOGY

1. Internet routing
Routing is the process of selecting a path across on or more networks. During internet
routing, a packet-switched network selects the paths for IP packets to travel from their origin
to their destination. These internet routing decisions are made by specialized network
hardware called routers.

In the image above, for a data packet to travel from computer A to computer B, the packet will
take a shorter path through networks 2 and 4, but networks 1, 3 and 5 may be faster at
forwarding packets than 2 and 4. These are the kind of choices routers constantly make.

2. Optimal Routing
Optimal routing is the approach where packets are switched within a network based on
optimization, which is, finding the optimum pathway from the available paths through which
the packets are going to be passed.

The approach is to assign a cost for passing through a network. The cost can be referred to as
a metric. High cost is believed to be bad while low cost is believed to be good. For example,
high throughput and low delay means low cost, while high delay and low throughput is
assimilated to high cost.

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 3. Optimality Principle
This is a general statement about optimal routes without regard to network topology or traffic.
It states that “If router J is on the optimal path from router I to router K, then the optimal path
from J to K also falls along the same route.

As a direct consequence of the optimality principle, we can see that the set of optimal routes
from all sources to a given destination form a tree rooted at the destination. Such a tree is
called a sink tree. The goal of all routing algorithms is to discover and use the sink trees for
all routers

Sink trees do not contain any loop so each packet will be delivered within a finite number of
hops.

4. Characterisation
Characterisation of optimal internet routing refers to properties that are desirable for packets
within the network to be routed optimally. These characteristics or properties are discussed
below.

a) Reliability
A reliable network provides a platform on which applications, can rely on for day-to-day
operations. Applications rely on networks for timely data transmission. Therefore, a network
should deliver packets within reasonable delay and jitter characteristics from any host to any
host.

In other words, a reliable network delivers virtually every packet accepted by the network to
the right destination, within a reasonable amount of time.

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Even though the job of a network is to reliably deliver data in the form of packets, the
networks will however sometimes reject traffic. This is because the traffic offered by the
devices within the network will most likely always be higher than the total amount of traffic
the network can handle.

b) Resiliency
The network should stay up all the time regardless of what the world throws in terms of failed
or dirty links, failing equipment and overload condition.

c) Robustness
This simply means that failure of one device constituting the network should not be a rad

d) Simplicity
Network designers consider the manageability, troubleshooting should be fairly easy because
failures occasionally occurs. Finding and fixing a problem should not take many hours no
matter in what corner of the network the problem is found.

e) Security
The network should be secure and provide few places and opportunities for an attacker to
disrupt it, consequently disrupting the traffic flow and the applications that rely on it.

f) Manageability
The network should have some sort of monitoring facility to determine what is going on at
any given time with devices, protocols and links.

The network should be easily modifiable to account for network growth or just changes in
general

II. INTERIOR AND EXTERIOR ROUTING

PROTOCOLS

Routing protocols enable routers to build up a routing table that associates the final
destinations with next hop addresses. Routing can be done through two ways: first is static
routing and second is dynamic routing. The router sends data on the shortest path defined in
its routing table. The manual selection of path in a router is called static routing and if the path
selection is done on the basis of a routing protocol (for example RIP, OSPF and EIGRP) then

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this type of routing is called dynamic routing. Dynamic routing is efficient than static routing
because it automatically adopts the topological changes happened in the network. A usual
objection against static routing is that it is hard to administer. This objection is valid for
medium to large scale networks but it is not valid for small networks with few or no
alternative routes. The dynamic routing is done through protocols called routing protocols.

The dynamic routing have two types of protocols, first is Interior Gateway Protocol (IGP) and
second is Exterior Gateway Protocol (EGP). The protocols that run within an autonomous
system are called Interior Gateway Protocols (IGP) and the protocols that run among two or
more autonomous systems are called Exterior Gateway Protocols (EGP). In context of
routing, an autonomous system has a single routing policy. In dynamic routing, we have three
IGP routing protocols that are RIP, OSPF, and EIGRP. On the other hand, we have one EGP
protocol named as BGP.

A. INTERIOR ROUTING PROTOCOLS

Interior routing protocols/IGP are used within an autonomous system. An autonomous system
is a set of routers under a common administration with common routing policies.

1. Routing Information Protocol (RIP)

RIP belongs to the family of IGP and is based on the algorithm known as “distance vector
algorithm. RIP is used in IP based internet. The working mechanism of RIP is as follows.
Router creates the list of directly connected network nodes. This information is advertised on
all enabled interfaces of the router. Any router that is connected to interface of advertising
router receives this table and copies this information into its own routing table and forwards
this information to next. This process makes sure that all routers become aware of each other.
In case the router doesn’t continue sending its advertisement, eventually there will be “time
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out” and will stop sending packets. Router has a property called metric (distance). After
receiving advertisement, router increments metric. Metric is also called hop count. A router
may have more than one route between two network nodes & in case of more than one route
the router will prefer shortest path for the transmission purpose. In case of selecting shortest
path, the router selects the path with lowest metric (hop count). Maximum value of metric can
be 16 towards destination. The destination will be unreachable if router has more than 15
nodes between source and destination. In case of any change in its routing table the router
immediately updates its neighbors. This process of advertisements will be executed again and
again. In case the router finds any node unreadable it immediately updates its neighbors to
optimize the performance of network

There are two Versions of RIP; RIPv1 and RIPv2

 RIPv1:
It functions by measuring the metric (hop count) from its present router to the
destination router. It shares updates to its routing table by broadcasting packets to an
address 255.255.255.255.

Limitations of RIPv1

- RIPv1 has a limit of 15 hops. A network that spans more than 15 hops (15 routers) is
considered unreachable.
- RIP has no concept of network delays and link costs. Routing decisions are based on
hop counts. The path with the lowest hop count to the destination is always preferred
even if the longer path has a better aggregate link bandwidth and less delays.
- Periodic broadcasts of the full routing table consume a large amount of bandwidth.
This is a major problem with large networks especially on slow links and WAN
clouds.
- RIP cannot handle Variable Length Subnet Masks (VLSM). Given the shortage of IP
addresses and the flexibility VLSM gives in the efficient assignment of IP addresses,
this is considered a major flaw.

 RIPv2:
Sends the routing updates by using the multicast address 224.0.0.9 which is used by it
for multicasting between RIP version 2 routers. RIP2 addresses the issues of VLSM,
authentication, and multicast routing updates.

All Cisco routers by default are configured to RIPv1. So, if they are to be configured for
RIPv2 then this information will be updated into the routers manually.

2. Open Shortest Path First (OSPF)

The Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) protocol is an Interior Gateway Protocol used to
distribute routing information within a single Autonomous System. Open Shortest Path First

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(OSPF) is a link-state routing protocol that is used to find the best path between the source
and the destination router using its own Shortest Path First). OSPF is developed as one of the
Interior Gateway Protocol (IGP), the protocol which aims at moving the packet within a large
autonomous system or routing domain. OSPF uses multicast address 224.0.0.5 for normal
communication and 224.0.0.6 for update to designated router (DR

OSPF versus RIP

- With OSPF, there is no limitation on the hop count.

- The intelligent use of VLSM is very useful in IP address allocation.
- OSPF uses IP multicast to send link-state updates. This ensures less process resource
consumption on routers that do not listen to OSPF packets.
- Updates are only sent in case routing changes occur instead of periodically. This
ensures efficient bandwidth.
- OSPF allows for routing authentication through different methods of password
authentication.

3. Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (IGRP)

IGRP is a proprietary protocol. IGRP was created in part to overcome the limitations of RIP
(maximum hop count of only 15, and a single routing metric) when used within large
networks. IGRP supports multiple metrics for each route, including bandwidth, delay, load,
and reliability; to compare two routes these metrics are combined into a single metric, using a
formula which can be adjusted through the use of pre-set constants. By default, the IGRP
composite metric is a sum of the segment delays and the lowest segment bandwidth. The
maximum configurable hop count of IGRP-routed packets is 255, and routing updates are
broadcast every 90 seconds (by default).

IGRP is considered a classful routing protocol. Because the protocol has no field for a subnet
mask, the router assumes that all subnetwork addresses within the same Class A, Class B, or
Class C network have the same subnet mask as the subnet mask configured for the interfaces
in question. This contrasts with classless routing protocols that can use variable length subnet
masks. Classful protocols have become less popular as they are wasteful of IP address space.

4. Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP)

EIGRP (Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol) is an advanced distance vector routing
protocol. This protocol is an evolution of an earlier Cisco protocol called IGRP, which is now
considered obsolete. EIGRP supports classless routing and VLSM, route summarization,
incremental updates, load balancing and many other useful features.

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EIGRP was previously a Cisco-owned protocol. However, Cisco has now made it an open-
standard protocol. Therefore, any vendor can use it now on their equipment. It does not have a
hop count limit of 15 like RIP. Therefore, it supports very large networks.

Routers running EIGRP must become neighbors before exchanging routing information. To
dynamically discover neighbors, EIGRP routers use the multicast address of 224.0.0.10. Each
EIGRP router stores routing and topology information in three tables:

Neighbor table – stores information about EIGRP neighbors

Topology table – stores routing information learned from neighboring routers

Routing table –stores the best routes

EIGRP calculates it’s metric by using bandwidth, delay, reliability and load. By default, only
bandwidth and delay are used when calculating metric, while reliability and load are set to
zero.

B. EXTERIOR ROUTING PROTOCOLS

Exterior Gateway Protocol (EGP) is the mechanism that allows the exterior gateway of an
autonomous system to share routing information with exterior gateways on other autonomous
systems. During the early days of the Internet, EGP was frequently used to interconnect
autonomous systems but was replaced by Border Gateway Protocol (BGP).

1. Border Gateway Protocol (BGP)

Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) refers to a gateway protocol that enables the internet to
exchange routing information between autonomous systems (AS). As networks interact with
each other, they need a way to communicate. This is accomplished through peering. BGP
makes peering possible. Without it, networks would not be able to send and receive
information with each other.

The protocol can connect together any internetwork of autonomous system using an arbitrary
topology. The only requirement is that each AS have at least one router that is able to run BGP
and that is router connect to at least one other AS’s BGP router. BGP’s main function is to
exchange network reach-ability information with other BGP systems. Border Gateway
Protocol constructs an autonomous systems’ graph based on the information exchanged
between BGP routers.

Characteristics of Border Gateway Protocol

 Inter-autonomous System Configuration: BGP’s inter-autonomous system

configuration allows it to make two autonomous systems communicate with each
other. Otherwise, they would not be able to connect and share information.
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  Supports Next-hop Paradigm: The next-hop paradigm dictates that a packet of data
goes to the next or most optimal choice among all the potential routers it can be sent
to. Because BGP supports next-hop, connections can be optimized for faster network
performance, instead of having to navigate far, disparate routing BGP points, wasting
valuable time.
Also, because of this support, administrators do not have to configure BGP for next-
hop connections.
 Coordination Among Multiple BGP Speakers Within an Autonomous System:
BGP is able to scan all the available options before deciding which one is the best
choice for the next stop of data. This requires its ability to coordinate among more
than one BGP speaker at the same time.
 Runs over TCP: Because BGP runs over Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), it is
compatible with the rest of the internet, which uses TCP for communications. TCP
makes sure data packets get sent and delivered across networks. BGP also interfaces
well with secure sockets layer (SSL), a virtual private network (VPN), and transport
layer security (TLS).
 BGP Conserves Network Bandwidth: The conservation of network bandwidth allows
an organization to get the most out of its network, and because BGP supports this, it
can be used to facilitate efficient network transmissions.
 BGP Supports CIDR: Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) refers to a way to
allocate Internet Protocol (IP) addresses so they can be used for IP routing. Because
BGP supports CIDR, it does not interfere with how IP addresses get assigned or
managed.
 BGP Also Supports Security: While BGP does not have any security features inherent
to it, it supports the existing security tools and protocols that various networks use.
This enables administrators to secure their networks and use BGP simultaneously.

Functions of Border Gateway Protocol

 Initial peer acquisition and authentication: BGP allows the right peer to be identified,
authenticated, and connected to, making the network run more efficiently.
 Sending of negative or positive reachability information: BGP sends information
regarding whether or not a peer is reachable. This saves time by eliminating errant
connections.
 Verification that the peers and the network connection between them are functioning
correctly: Once a connection happens, BGP is able to verify the health of the
communication. In this way, BGP facilitates more consistent, reliable connections.

III. SHORTCOMINGS OF OPTIMAL ROUTING

 Resources: Optimal routing requires more resources such as CPU, RAM and
Bandwidth. Hence, for works such as calculating dynamic routes and holding routing
tables, it needs additional resources.

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 Complexity: Optimal routing tends to implement more complexity in the network,
especially in the implementation process. Whenever a router adapt to the changes in
the network it must constantly remove unwanted information from the routing table.
This type of situation adds more complexity in the routing protocol.
 Security: Optimal routing is less secure due to their multicasting and broadcasting
updates. The only way to increase the security is by using additional configuration
settings such as routing protocol and passive interface.
 Bandwidth Shortages: Using routing protocols, router communicate with each other so
that they can share information about network topology. If it is a low speed link such
as a large or unstable network, this can drastically consume more bandwidth leading to
bandwidth shortages.
 Administration Control: The routes the dynamic routes has to choose is decided by the
routing protocol. The network administrator has nothing to do with them.

IV. APPLICATIONS OF OPTIMAL ROUTING

PROTOCOLS

 Optimal routing can be used to improve the performance and reliability of

telecommunications networks, such as cellular networks and broadband networks.
 WANs connect geographically dispersed locations, making optimal routing essential
for ensuring efficient and reliable communication.
 Optimal routing and topological design can be used to improve the performance and
reliability of data center networks.

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