IP Routing protocols

Types of routing procols

There are two types of routing protocols:

1. Distance vector (RIP, IGRP)
2. Link state (OSPF, IS-IS)

Cisco has created its own routing protocol – EIGRP. EIGRP is considered to be an advanced distance vector protocol, although some materials erroneously state that EIGRP is a hybrid routing protocol, a combination of distance vector and link state.



All of the routing protocols mentioned above are interior routing protocols (IGP), which means that they are used to exchange routing information within one autonomous system. BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) is an example of an exterior routing protocol (EGP) which is used to exchange routing information between autonomous systems on the Internet.

Distance vector protocols

As the name implies, distance vector routing protocols use distance to determine the best path to a remote network. The distance is usually the number of hops (routers) to the destination network.

Distance vector protocols send complete routing table to each neighbor (a neighbor is directly connected router that runs the same routing protocol). They usually use some version of Bellman-Ford algorithm to calculate the best routes. Compared with link state routing protocols, distance vector protocols are simpler to configure and require little management, but are susceptible to routing loops and converge slower than link state routing protocols. Distance vector protocols also use more bandwidth because they send complete routing table, while link state procotols sends specific updates only when topology changes occur.

RIP and EIGRP are examples of distance vector routing protocols.

Link state protocols

Link state routing protocols are the second type of routing protocols. They have the same basic purpose as distance vector protocols, to find a best path to a destination, but use different  methods to do so. Unlike distance vector protocols, link state protocols don’t advertise the entire routing table. Instead, they advertise information about a network toplogy (directly connected links, neighboring routers…), so that in the end all routers running a link state protocol have the same topology database. Link state routing protocols converge much faster than distance vector routing protocols, support classless routing, send updates using multicast addresses and use triggered routing updates. They also require more router CPU and memory usage than distance-vector routing protocols and can be harder to configure.

Each router running a link state routing protocol creates three different tables:

1. neighbor table – the table of neighboring routers running the same link state routing protocol
2. topology table – the table that stores the topology of the entire network
3. routing table – the table that stores the best routes
Shortest Path First algorithm is used to calculate the best route. OSPF and IS-IS are examples of link state routing protocols.

Difference between distance vector and link state routing protocols

The following table summarizes the difference: