You will usually read everywhere that RIP takes considerably a large time to converge. But have you ever wondered why or did you try to find out what processes are involved due to which this delay occurs? I am sure quite a few of you have done it, but it always helps to refresh your memory Today we will see 2 scenarios and check the approximate convergence time it takes for RIP. The 2 scenarios are:

When a link goes down, an update is triggered with a poisoned route.
When the routing updates stops (like in…

One of the simplest routing protocol is Routing Information Protocol (RIP). It is classified as an IGP and it uses the distance-vector algorithm. Specifically the algorithm is called Bellman-Ford Algorithm. I will discuss the algorithm in a later post. Today I will describe briefly about the protocol and how it works. The protocol has 2 versions RIPv1 and RIPv2. Both are in use today and have significant differences. RIP has also been adapted for IPv6. This is called RIPng. RIP uses UDP to transmit its updates. The UDP port used is 520. RIP neighbors exchange their complete routing table at regular interval of 30 seconds (default). This is called the update timer. There is no session formation between RIP neighbors. Once RIP is enabled on a network subnet, it immediately starts