2012/12/31

RIP version 1 Vs RIP version 2

RIP = Routing Information Protocol

RIP was first introduced in 1988 in RFC 1058 and was developed for exchanging routing information among gateways and other hosts. By the time RIP served it purpose well when networks were small and didn't require complex subnet allocations.

While RIPv1 is still widle used, in modern networks RIPv1 has been replaced with enchaned RIPv2. RIPv2 was developed 1993 and standardized 1998. It was developed to make RIP more effecient and secure.

How RIP works

Basic function of RIP is to send periodic updates every 30 seconds. In this update, routers will exchange their routing tables, so they can keep track how to reach different networks. They will update even when there is no changes in the routing tables.

Originally RIPv1 sent these updates trough broadcast address of 255.255.255.255. RIPv2 protocol uses 224.0.0.9 which is a multicast address, greatly saving bandwidth and increasing performance of updates.

Fastest path will be decided with Hop Count (Hops between subnets). Hop Count is limited to 15 so everything above 16 hops is considered unreachable. This way infinite loops cannot happens in RIP network.

RIPv1 Vs RIPv2


RIPv1 vs RIPv2
Classful vs Classless

RIPv1 used classful routing, it means that RIPv1 couldn't send subnet information in its periodic updates.

Classful routing protocol will look up the first octet of your IP address and determinate which class it belongs to.

For instance if your IP address belongs to Class B, it has a default subnet of  /16 (255.255.0.0). If your network would be 172.10.10.0/24, Classful routing protocol would see only 172.10.0.0/16 and ignore your /24 network.

RIPv2 is a Classless routing protocol and now routers can have subnet masks in their routing tables. Enabling you to have any kind of network and RIP doesn't have to rely on the class of the IP address anymore!

Broadcast updates has been replaced with multicast

Since broadcasting routing tables to every host in your network creates a lot of overhead. RIPv2 multicasts updates are only received by those who are interested about them. Which is a lot more efficient.

Lack of authentication creates security vulnerabilities

Since RIPv1 doesn't support authentication. Any device can send updates to your routers. If malicious device enters your network, it could advertise any networks to neighbouring routers and they would trust it fully.

RIPv2 can exchange passwords with MD5 encryption.

Lack of VLSM made IP addressing inefficient

RIPv2 can send subnetmasks in its periodic updates, which allows RIP to handle any size of subnets. This made IP addressing a lot more efficient since you can allocate smaller blocks of IP addresses for networks that didn't have many hosts.

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