Chapter no 4

Routing Information Protocol

Although the new version of the CCNA exam 200-120 does not cover RIP, we want to touch on
it for its historical value.  This way you understand some of the basic characteristics of it and
how a hybrid protocol such as EIGRP took some distance vector based features from a true
distance vector protocol.  So simply read through this to have a basic foundation of RIP and do
not worry about it from a test perspective.

As you already know, RIP is a distance-vector protocol. In fact, it is the only distance vector
protocol that is widely used today. There are two versions of RIP that can be used – RIP version
1 (RIPv1) and RIP version 2 (RIPv2). To make it easier to understand, this section first looks at
RIPv1.

RIPv1 was originally defined in RFC 1058 and is a classful protocol. Hence, it does not advertise
subnet mask information and assumes the default subnet mask based on the class of the network.

When a router starts up, it recognizes the connected networks and adds them to its routing table
as connected routes (denoted by C in the routing table). When RIP is enabled, it will broadcast
the routing table using UDP port 520. All neighboring routers that have RIP enabled will get this
broadcast update and add the routes received in the update to their routing table. Each of these
neighbors will in turn broadcast out their routing tables. This will cause the routing tables across
the network to converge.

Being a distance-vector protocol, RIP has the following characteristics:

1. It sends out its entire routing table every 30 seconds.

2. It uses hop counts as metric and has a maximum hop count limit of 15.
3. It implements split horizon, route poisoning and hold down timers to prevent routing
loops.
4. It has high convergence time

RIP Timers

Notice that there are two timers mentioned above. RIP actually uses 4 different timers. To
understand these timers consider the network shown in figure 5-1. If RIP is enabled on all the
routers, after convergence, all the routers will know the 192.168.100.0/24 network

            Now take a look at the four timers used by RIP:

 Route update timer – RIP sends broadcasts out the entire routing table. This interval
sets the interval between these updates.
 Route invalid timer – If a router does not hear any updates about a particular route for
certain duration, it will consider that route as invalid. The invalid timer determines this
 duration.  When a route becomes invalid, the router will send out poisoned routes to its
neighbors. By default this value is 180 seconds. In the network above, if RouterC loses
connectivity to RouterD, it will not hear about the 192.168.5.0/24 network. It will wait
180 seconds before considering the route as invalid and sending out poisoned routes.
 Holddown timer – When a route becomes invalid, it enters into a holddown state. In this
state the route will remain in the routing table and packets will be forwarded towards the
destination but the router will not accept any updates regarding this route unless the
update contains a metric equal to or better than the existing metric. The holddown timer
determines the duration of the hold-down state. By default this duration is 180 seconds.
This state is useful to ensure that flapping routes do not cause instability. In the network
above, when RouterB gets the poisoned route from RouterC, it will put the route to
192.168.5.0/24 in the holddown state for 180 seconds. If RouterC regains connectivity to
RouterD and updates RouterB, the route will be removed from the holddown state.
 Router flush timer – Once a route becomes invalid, it is put in a holddown state. While
in the holddown state, the route is still in the routing table and will remain so for the
duration specific by the flush timer. Once this timer expires, the route is flushed out of
the routing table. By default this timer is 240 seconds and starts at the same time as the
invalid timer. Hence the flush timer must be more than the invalid timer. In the above
example, RouterA, RouterB and RouterC will remove the route to 192.168.5.0/24 60
seconds after it was marked invalid.

The timers can be a little confusing. To make it easier to understand, remember that:

1. Invalid timer and Flush timer both start when the router receives an update for a route.
Each time an update is received, the timers are reset back.
2. If an update for a route is not heard for the duration of the invalid timer, it is marked
invalid and the hold-down timer is started.
3. While the route is in the holddown state, the router will not accept an inferior route for
that destination. Inferior route is an update with a metric worse than or equal to the
existing one.
4. The route will be removed when the flush timer expires.

In the above network, route to 192.168.100.0/24 becomes invalid 180 seconds after RouterC
loses connectivity to RouterD. At this stage, 60 seconds are left in the flush timer. Hence 60
seconds after the route became invalid; it will be removed from the routing table. As you can see,
it takes a total of 240 seconds or four minutes for a lost route to be removed from the routing
tables across the network.

Configuring RIP
Configuring RIPv1

Configuring RIP is pretty easy and consists of the following two steps:
 1. Enable RIP globally using the router rip global configuration command. This command
will bring you to the routing configuration mode as shown below:

Router#config terminal
Router(config)#router rip
Router(config-router)# 

2. Tell the router which networks to advertise using the network <network> command in
the routing configuration mode as shown below:

Router(config-router)#network 192.168.0.0 

Remember that the network command is used to tell the router that connected routes you want to
advertise. Any routes learned from other routers will automatically be advertised out. Since
RIPv1 is being used, the network command will accept classful networks only. As soon as the
network command is given, RIP will begin sending out updates as well as processing updates
received from neighbors.

The network shown in Figure 5-2 will be used for the rest of the RIP sections.

Now that you know how RIP works and how to configure it, let us configure the network shown
in Figure 5-2 to see effect of RIP on the routing table. For this example, we will enable RIP on
RouterA, RouterB and RouterD only. RouterC will be configured in one of the sections ahead.
The configuration required on the three routers is shown below:
 Fig: RIP Topology

Router1 configuration:

Router1#config terminal

Router1(config)#int s1/0

Router1(config-if)#ip add 192.168.110.1 255.255.255.0

Router1(config-if)#no shut

Router1(config)#int s1/1

Router1(config-if)#ip add 192.168.140.2 255.255.255.0

Router1(config-if)#no shut

Router1(config)#router rip

Router1(config-router)#network 192.168.110.0

Router1(config-router)#network 192.168.140.0
Router1(config-router)#network 192.168.50.0

Router2:

Router1#config terminal

Router1(config)#int s1/0

Router1(config-if)#ip add 192.168.110.2 255.255.255.0

Router1(config-if)#no shut

Router1(config)#int s1/1

Router1(config-if)#ip add 192.168.120.1 255.255.255.0

Router1(config-if)#no shut

Router3:

Router1#config terminal

Router1(config)#int s1/1

Router1(config-if)#ip add 192.168.140.1 255.255.255.0

Router1(config-if)#no shut

Router1(config)#int s1/0

Router1(config-if)#ip add 192.168.130.2 255.255.255.0

Router1(config-if)#no shut

Router3(config)#router rip

Router3(config-router)#network 192.168.140.0

Router3(config-router)#network 192.168.130.0

Router4:

Router1#config terminal

Router1(config)#int s1/0
Router1(config-if)#ip add 192.168.130.1 255.255.255.0

Router1(config-if)#no shut

Router1(config)#int s1/1

Router1(config-if)#ip add 192.168.120.2 255.255.255.0

Router1(config-if)#no shut

Router4(config)#router rip

Router4(config-router)#network 192.168.120.0

Router4(config-router)#network 192.168.130.0

Now loot at the routing tables of the Routers:

Routing table of R1
 Routing table of R3

Routing table of R4

In the above output, note the lines that start with R. The R signifies that these routes were learned
from RIP. In output from RouterA, notice that the route to 192.168.4.0/24 network was learned
from RIP. The 120/2 in the line shows that the administrative distance of the route is 120 (default
RIP AD) and that the destination network is two hops away. The next hop towards
192.168.4.0/24 is 192.168.2.2, which is RouterB. Similarly you will notice that each router now
knows about every subnet in the network. You may have noticed that compared to static or
default routing, configuring RIP was easier and faster. Now when there is a change in the
network, the routing table will automatically get updated across the network.
RIP version 2 (RIPv2) 

RIPv1 was one of the earliest routing protocols and was very popular back when it was created.
With evolution in networking standards, RIP was found lacking in many places. Hence RIPv2
was developed in 1993 and standardized under RFC 2453. While RIPv2 is also a distance-vector
routing protocols and fundamentally similar to RIPv1, there are some difference in the way it
works. Table 5-1 shows the differences between RIPv1 and RIPv2.

RIPv1 RIPv2
It is a classful protocol and does not Is a classless protocol and sends subnet
send subnet masks in routing updates masks in routing updates
Uses broadcast to communicate with Uses multicast to communicate with
neighbors peers. Multicast address 224.0.0.9 is used.
RIPv1 does not support authentication RIPv2 supports authentication
Does not support VLSM Supports VLSM
 

Remember that apart from the differences given in Table 5-1, RIPv2 is similar to RIPv1 with a
maximum hop count of 15 and same timers as RIPv1. It also implements the same loop
prevention techniques as RIPv1. The configuration for RIPv2 is same as RIPv1 but requires the
addition of version 2 command in the routing configuration mode. Router1, Router3 and
Router4 from our previous example can be configured to use RIPv2 as shown below:

Router1(config)#router rip
Router1(config-router)#version 2

Router2(config)#router rip
Router2(config-router)#version 2

Router3(config)#router rip
Router3(config-router)#version 2

Take a look at the routing tables of these routers after the change

Router1#show ip route:
 Routing table

Router3#show ip route:

Routing table

Router4#show ip route
 Routing table

You will notice that the routing table output is same irrespective of the RIP version used. The
output will only differ between the two protocols if the default mask is not used for the given
class.

Passive interface:

As soon as RIP is enabled, it will start sending and receiving updates on interfaces. Many
situations require you to stop RIP from sending updates out an interface. An example of such a
situation is when an interface connects to the Internet. You do not want your routing updates to
go out to the Internet. In such situations, you can use the passive-interface interface command
in the routing configuration mode to stop RIP from sending updates out that interface. This
command stop RIP from sending updates but it will continue to receive updates on that interface.

In our example network, we do not need to send RIP updates out interface fa0/0 on Router1 and
interface fa0/1 on Router4. We can stop updates going off these interfaces using the following
commands:

Router1(config)#router rip
Router1(config-router)#passive-interface fa0/0

Router4(config)#router rip
Router4(config-router)#passive-interface fa0/1

RIP Load Balancing:

Remember that we did not configure Router2 earlier? Let us configure Router2 to run RIP across
both its networks as shown below:

Router2(config)#router rip
Router2(config-router)#network 192.168.20.0
Router2(config-router)#network 192.168.30.0 

After the above configuration, the routing table on Router2 looks as shown below: