Routing Information Protocol

RIP is a widely used interior routing protocol. It is included as part of the operating system
with many Linux and Unix systems, as well as in the Windows NT/2000 RRAS package. RIP
is installed on many systems, and it is easy to configure and run.
RIP defines the "best" route as being the lowestcost route, which is the one with the lowest
routing metric. The routing metric is an arbitrary number from 1 to 15 that represents the
number of
gateways that traffic must pass through to reach the destination. RIP calls each router a
"hop" and the metric a "hop count." The best route to a destination is the one that passes
through the fewest
routers. This technique for determining the best route is called a distancevector algorithm.
When RIP starts, it broadcasts a request for routing information. A router running RIP
responds to the request by sending an update packet that contains the destination addresses
and associated
metrics from its routing table. In addition to responding to requests, routers that run RIP issue
update packets every 30 seconds. If a router stops issuing updates for 180 seconds, the
other routers on the network assume that it is dead, and delete any routes that go through
that router.
RIP processes an update packet in the following manner:
If the packet contains new routes that are not in the routing table, they are added.
If the packet contains routes that are lower cost than the same routes in the existing routing
table, the old routes are deleted, and the new routes are used. The cost of a new route is
determined by adding the cost of reaching the router that sent the update to the cost metric
included in the update packet.
If the packet contains routes that have a cost of 15, those routes are deleted from the
routing
table if the update came from the gateway used for those routes. For example, if your
routing table contains a route to subnet 172.16.50.0 through gateway 172.16.55.36 and it
receives a RIP update from 172.16.55.36 with a cost of 15 for the route to 172.16.50.0, your
system deletes the route.
RIP has been around for a long time, and it shows its age. Very large networks cannot use
RIP because the longest route it allows is 15 hops. This should be large enough for your
network, but it is insufficient for large national networks. Additionally, it can take a long time
for the routing table to
reflect the current state of the network because RIP waits 180 seconds before discarding
routes from an inactive router. This can be worsened by the "count to infinity" problem. (Not
familiar with "counting to infinity?" See the upcoming sidebar.) More important than either of
these problems is the fact that RIP is not equipped to handle network bit masks, which
makes it incompatible with current IP address standards.