Routing Protocols

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 Nonroutable Protocols
• In the early days of networking, networks were
small collections of computers linked together
– For the purposes of sharing information and
expensive peripherals
• Early networks were sometimes configured as
peer-to-peer networks
– Computers communicate with and provide
services to their “peers”
– All communication occurs on the same network
segment
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Nonroutable Protocols (continued)

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Nonroutable Protocols (continued)
• Several nonroutable protocols exist in today’s
networking world
• NetBEUI (NetBIOS Enhanced User Interface)
– The most common nonroutable protocol
– Ships with all Microsoft Windows operating
systems
• NetBEUI cannot scale into large internetworks
– Cannot hold Network layer information in its
network header

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 Routed Protocols
• Routed protocols
– Have packet headers that can contain Network layer
addresses
– Developed to support networks consisting of multiple
networks or subnetworks
• Protocols that can carry Network layer
information
– Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol
(TCP/IP)
– Internetwork Packet Exchange/Sequenced Packet
Exchange (IPX/SPX)

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 Routed Protocols (continued)
• For routed protocols to work on a network
– Every device must be configured with a unique IP
or IPX address (logical address)

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 Routing Protocol Definition:
• Routing protocol – any protocol that defines
algorithms to be used for updating routing
tables between routers. Basically, a routing
protocol determines the path of a packet
through an internetwork.
• Examples: RIP, RIPv2, IGRP, EIGRP, OSPF, IS-IS,
BGP

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Routing Protocols (continued)

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 Remember:
• A Routed Protocol – defines logical addressing.
Most notable example on the test – IP
• A Routing Protocol – fills the routing table
with routing information.

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 Static Routing
• Some networks are so small that using a routing
protocol creates:
– Unnecessary traffic
– An inefficient use of router processor resources
• Stub routers
– Routers with only one route out
– Stub routers are usually the last router in a chain
• Stub networks
– Networks with one route to the Internet
• Static routes are configured by a network
administrator using the ip route command
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Adding Static Routes

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 Static Routing
• Advantages of static routing
– It can backup multiple interfaces/networks on a
router
– Easy to configure
– No extra resources are needed
– More secure
• Disadvantages of static routing
– Network changes require manual
reconfiguration
– Does not scale well in large topologies
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 Dynamic Routing Protocols
• Function(s) of Dynamic Routing Protocols:
– Dynamically share information between routers.
– Automatically update routing table when
topology changes.
– Determine best path to a destination.

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 Dynamic Routing Protocols
• The purpose of a dynamic routing protocol
is to:
– Discover remote networks
– Maintaining up-to-date routing information
– Choosing the best path to destination networks
– Ability to find a new best path if the current path
is no longer available

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 Dynamic Routing Protocols
• Components of a routing protocol
– Algorithm
• In the case of a routing protocol algorithms are used for
facilitating routing information and best path
determination
– Routing protocol messages
• These are messages for discovering neighbors and
exchange of routing information

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 Routing Protocols Metrics
• Metric
– A value used by a routing protocol to determine which routes
are better than others

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 Routing Protocols Metrics
• Metrics used in IP routing protocols
– Bandwidth
– Cost
– Delay
– Hop count
– Load
– Reliability

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 Routing Protocols Metrics
• The Metric Field in
the Routing Table
• Metric used for
each routing
protocol
– RIP - hop count
– IGRP & EIGRP -
Bandwidth (used by
default), Delay
(used by default),
Load, Reliability
– IS-IS & OSPF - Cost,
Bandwidth (Cisco’s
implementation)
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 Routing Protocols Metrics
• Load balancing
– This is the ability of a router to distribute packets among
multiple same cost paths

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Administrative Distance of a Route
• Purpose of a metric
– It’s a calculated value used to determine the
best path to a destination
• Purpose of Administrative Distance
– It’s a numeric value that specifies the preference
of a particular route

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Administrative Distance of a Route
• Identifying the Administrative Distance (AD)
in a routing table
– It is the first number in the brackets in the
routing table

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Administrative Distance of a Route
• Dynamic Routing Protocols

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Administrative Distance of a Route
• Directly connected routes
– Have a default AD of 0
• Static Routes
– Administrative distance of a static route has a
default value of 1

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Administrative Distance of a Route
• Directly connected routes
– Immediately appear in the routing table as soon
as the interface is configured

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 Routing Protocols (continued)
• Autonomous system (AS)
– Uses Interior Gateway Protocols as routing protocols
– A group of routers under the control of a single
administration
• Interior Gateway Protocols (IGPs) are
– Routing protocols used within an AS
• Exterior Gateway Protocols (EGPs)
– Routing protocols used to route information between
multiple autonomous systems
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Routing Protocols (continued)

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 Routing Protocols (continued)

• Examples of IGPs
– Routing Information Protocol (RIP)
– Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (IGRP)
– Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol
(EIGRP)
– Open Shortest Path First (OSPF)
• Example of EGP
– Border Gateway Protocol (BGP)
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 Classless or Classful
• Classless routing protocols transmit the
subnet mask along with each route in the
routing updates sent by that protocol.
• Classful routing protocols do not transmit
mask information.
• Only classless routing protocols support VLSM.
To say that a routing protocol is classless is to
say that it supports VLSM.

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 Two Types of IGPs

• Distance-vector routing protocols

– Broadcast their entire routing table to each
neighbor router at predetermined intervals
– The actual interval depends on the distance-
vector routing protocol in use
• Varies between 30 and 90 seconds
– Sometimes referred to as routing by rumor
– Suffer from slow time to convergence
• A state where all routers on the internetwork share a
common view of the internetwork routes
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Two Types of IGPs (continued)

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Two Types of IGPs (continued)

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 Two Types of IGPs (continued)
• Distance-vector routing protocols (continued)
– Routing loops
• Often referred to as count-to-infinity problems
• Loops, without preventive measures, will cause packets
to bounce around the internetwork infinitely
– Defining a maximum
• One of the easiest ways to limit count-to-infinity
problems

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 Two Types of IGPs (continued)
• Distance-vector routing protocols (continued)
– Hold-down timer
• Another common technique used to stop routing loops
• Allow a router to place a route in a state where it will
not accept any changes to that route
• Link-state routing protocols
– Use link-state advertisements (LSAs) to inform
neighbor routers on the internetwork
– LSAs contain only the local links for the advertised
router
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 Two Types of IGPs (continued)
• Link-state routing protocols (continued)
– Shortest Path First (SPF) algorithm
• Uses the link information to compute the routes
• Router CPU resources are used instead of bandwidth
– Link-state packets (LSPs)
• Packets used to send out LSAs
• Allow every router in the internetwork to share a
common view of the topology of the internetwork
– A link-state routing protocol floods, or multicasts,
LSPs to the network

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 Routing Information Protocol
• Routing Information Protocol (RIP)
– The easiest Interior Gateway Protocol to configure is
RIPv1
– A distance-vector routing protocol that broadcasts
entire routing tables to neighbors every 30 seconds
– RIP uses hop count as its sole metric
• RIP has a maximum hop count of 15
– As a result, RIP does not work in large internetworks
• RIP is capable of load balancing
• RIP is susceptible to all the problems normally
associated with distance-vector routing protocols

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 Interior Gateway Routing Protocol
• IGRP is a proprietary distance-vector routing
protocol
– Created by Cisco to solve some of the problems
associated with RIP
• A larger hop-count metric allows IGRP to be used
on larger networks
– IGRP supports a hop count of 255, although 100 is the
default if hop count is configured to be used as a
metric
• The metric maximum-hops command allows
you to set the maximum hop count for IGRP

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 Interior Gateway Routing Protocol
(continued)
• The default metrics for IGRP are bandwidth and
delay only
• Metrics that can be configured for IGRP
– Hops: number of routers between source and
destination networks
– Load: the load on a link in the path
– Bandwidth: the speed of the link (default)
– Reliability: measures reliability with a scale of 0 to 255
– Delay: the delay on the medium (default)
– MTU: the size of the datagram

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 Open Shortest Path First (OSPF)
• OSPF is the most popular link-state IP routing
protocol today.
• Because OSPF does not send full updates on a
regular short interval (like RIP), the overall
number of bytes sent for routing information
is typically smaller.

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 Open Shortest Path First (OSPF)
• OSPF uses a concept called cost for the metric.
Each link is considered to have a cost; a route’s
cost is the sum of the cost for each link.
• By default, Cisco derives the cost value for a
link from the bandwidth.
• OSPF supports VLSM.

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 Integrated IS-IS
• OSI defines a network layer protocol called the
Connectionless Network Protocol (CLNP). It
also defines a routing protocol – a routing
protocol used to advertise CLNP routes, called
Intermediate System-to-Intermediate System
(IS-IS). IS-IS advertises CLNP routes between
“intermediate systems,” which is what OSI
calls routers.
• Also a link state protocol

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Balanced Hybrid Protocols: Enhanced IGRP

• EIGRP uses features similar to link-state

protocols, and others similar to distance
vector protocols, and yet others unlike either
of the two.
• The internal workings of EIGRP depend on an
algorithm called the Diffusing Update
Algorithm (DUAL).
– Requires less processing than the Dijkstra SPF
algorithm.

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