RIP in Operation

Abhishek Verma abhishekv.verma at gmail.com
Thu Sep 16 13:49:24 UTC 2004


Hi,

I am sure that there would be very few people running RIP in their
networks, but since the IETF RIP mailing list is dead, and also
because its more of an operational question, the Nanog list felt most
appropriate to me for the following post.

Why would you, as an operator, recieve RIPv2 Request messages? The
only reason that comes to my mind is when a remote RIPv2 router has
just come up. That time its going to multicast this message on all its
interfaces configured to run RIP. This is the *only* reason that comes
to my mind.

However, there is text in the RFC 2453 that states that RIP can use
this message to request specific networks also. It also states that
such a request can only be made by a diagonistic software and cannot
be used for routing. My doubt is, how can a diagnostic software, use
the services of RIP for doing that?

I assume (please correct me if i am wrong) that the RIP requests are
only then, used for requesting the entire routing tables, and nothing
else. The 'diagnostics' story sounds too far fetched to me!

Thanks,
Abhishek V.

P.S.
I tried googling but nothing came up.

--
Class of 2004
Institue Of Technology, BHU
Varanasi - India



More information about the NANOG mailing list