Routing Protocol Evaluation Criteria

Protocol RIPv1 RIPv2 OSPF EIGRP

Type Distance-vector Distance-vector Link-state Distance-vector

Convergence Time Slow Slow Fast Fast

VLSM No Yes Yes Yes

Bandwidth Consumption High High Low Low

Resource Consumption Low Low High Low

Multi-path Support No Yes Yes Yes

Scales Well No No Yes Yes

Proprietary No No No Yes

 Convergence Time: Convergence time is the point at which all routers on

your network know about all current routes for the network. When a router
is added or removed from a network, a certain amount of time —
convergence time — must pass before this change is propagated to all
routers on the network.

 Variable length subnet masks (VLSM): This term refers to whether all
routers on the network are required to use the same subnet mask. This
requirement reduces your flexibility in assigning IP address network IDs to
the network segments on your network.
 Bandwidth Consumption: This term refers to the amount of necessary
network bandwidth to maintain and distribute routing table information on
the network. To share and distribute routing table information, all routing
protocols need to send an amount of data over the network, and some
send more than others.

 Resource Consumption: In calculating and maintain routing table

information on a router, a certain amount of processing power and memory
is used.

 Multi-path Support: When routes are discovered on the network that

have loops in their paths, some segments have two possible routes, which
represent multiple paths. Some routing protocols have support for multiple
paths, by storing alternative paths in their routing information.

 Scales Well: Some routing protocols operate well on small networks, but
as the number of routers increases on the network, the routing protocol
does not function as well. Routing protocols that can be used on small to
very large networks scale well in size.

 Proprietary: The routing protocol based on open standards or a

proprietary protocol owned by one company can affect the level of support
and the speed of changes.