RIP Justification

Ricky Beam jfbeam at gmail.com
Wed Sep 29 20:47:01 UTC 2010


On Wed, 29 Sep 2010 16:20:48 -0400, Jesse Loggins <jlogginsccie at gmail.com>  
wrote:
> 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".

That is the correct way to think about RIP. (RIPv1 specific)  In 99% of  
the cases where I've seen RIP used (over 2 decades), they would've been  
better off with static routes. (or they needed something a lot more  
complex/robust... say, a power company running RIPv1 over their entire  
network.)  The 1% where it was a necessary evil... dialup networking where  
the only routing protocol supported was RIP (v2) [netblazers] -- static IP  
clients had to be able to land anywhere -- but RIP only lived on the local  
segment, OSPF took over network-wide. (Later MaxTNT's were setup with OSPF  
stub areas so they didn't have to have a full route table.)

BTW, ALL other routing protocols are more complex than RIP.  One cannot  
get any simpler than RIP.

--Ricky




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