Basics Of RIP

Basics Of Routing Information Protocol(RIP)

In this article, we will learn about the basics of the Routing Information Protocol aka RIP.
RIP is used for small networks. It is a pure distance vector routing protocol means it measures distance or Hopcount to reach any destination network address.

RIP is used with old Unix systems as there are several alternatives available of it, which can perform better than RIP, but here first we learn about RIP then we will move towards other routing protocols.

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Basics Of RIP

RIP is a pure distance vector protocol so to measure the distance it uses HOPCOUNT as its metric. RIP calculates its metric up to 15 hops anything beyond the 15 hops RIP is considered that Infinity Route or Poison Route. After counting the hops it uses Bellman-Ford Distance Vector Algorithm for the best path selection. let's say if a particular destination is reachable from 6 different paths, means those 6 different paths have equal hop counts to reach that destination. In this scenario RIP will select up to 4 Paths and perform Round -Robin to load-balance the traffic. 

RIP has an AD value of 120 and utilizes UPD port 520 for sending and receiving datagrams between RIP running Routers. 

RIP sends its full routing table every 30 seconds to the respective networks.    

VERSIONS OF RIP

RIP has two versions available so far:

RIPv1 and RIPv2

RIPv1

RIPv1 is documented in RFC 1058

RIPv1 does not support VLSM( Variable Length Subnet Mask), which means it does not provide the subnet information in its routing updates and summarises the networks to their Classful boundaries.

RIPv1 supports only contiguous networks, we will have a look at it during the Configuration. but for some just understand it as if Router1 Connected With Router2 using a Class A  IP Address & Router2 Connected with Router3 With Class B IP Address and Router 3 Connected with Router 4 with Class A IP address then RIPv1 will not support it.

RIPv1 Broadcast its Updates on address 255.255.255.255 and does not support any Encryption and authentication between RIP Running Routers.

RIPv2

RIPv2 is documented in RFC 2543

RIPv2 does support VLSM and provides network subnet information in its routing updates.

RIPv2 also supports discontiguous networks.

RIPv2 uses multicast address 224.0.0.9 for updates.

RIPv2 supports encryption and authentication between routers running RIP Version 2.

Interoperability in RIP v1 & v2 Updates

Version                                 Send                                                   Receive

RIPv1                                    v1 Updates                                        v1 Updates

RIPv2                                    v1 & v2 Updates                               v2 Updates