RIP Justification

Thu Sep 30 03:42:34 UTC 2010

On Wed, 29 Sep 2010 17:26:17 -0400
Craig <cvuljanic at gmail.com> wrote:

> We have a design for our wan where we use rip v2 and it works very well, we were using ospf but it was additional config, so in our case simple was better, and it works well..
> 

I'm don't really buy the extra config argument. It's literally
differences measured in seconds or minutes between the configuration
effort, and in the context of the operational benefits over time of link
state verses distance vector, I think they're worth spending.

However, if you want a really simple OSPF config, the following two
lines will make OSPF just work everywhere it can on a Cisco router

router ospf 64512
  network 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.255 area 0

One of the large delays you see in OSPF is election of the designated
router on multi-access links such as ethernets. As ethernet is being
very commonly used for point-to-point non-edge links, you can eliminate
that delay and also the corresponding network LSA by making OSPF treat
the link as a point-to-point link e.g.

int ethernet0
  ip ospf network point-to-point

If your implementation doesn't support point-to-point mode for an
interface, point-to-multipoint mode on an ethernet would achieve
something somewhat equivalent.

> I could discuss it more with you off-line if you like. 
> 
> 
> 
> On Sep 29, 2010, at 4:20 PM, Jesse Loggins <jlogginsccie at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > A group of engineers and I were having a design discussion about routing
> > protocols including RIP and static routing and the justifications of use for
> > each protocol. One very interesting discussion was surrounding RIP and its
> > use versus a protocol like OSPF. It seems that many Network Engineers
> > consider RIP an old antiquated protocol that should be thrown in back of a
> > closet "never to be seen or heard from again". Some even preferred using a
> > more complex protocol like OSPF instead of RIP. I am of the opinion that
> > every protocol has its place, which seems to be contrary to some engineers
> > way of thinking. This leads to my question. What are your views of when and
> > where the RIP protocol is useful? Please excuse me if this is the incorrect
> > forum for such questions.
> > 
> > -- 
> > Jesse Loggins
> > CCIE#14661 (R&S, Service Provider)
> 