Introduction to Routing Information Protocol (RIP), RIPv1, RIPv2, Differences between RIPv1 and RIPv2

IP RIP (Routing Information Protocol) comes in two different versions: 1 and 2. Version 1 is a distance vector protocol (RFC 1058) and Version 2 is a hybrid protocol (RFCs 1721 and 1722).

Routing Information Protocol Version 1 (RIPv1)

RIPv1 uses local broadcasts to share routing information. These updates are periodic in nature, occurring, by default, every 30 seconds. To prevent packets from circling around a loop forever, both versions of RIP solve counting to infinity by placing a hop count limit of 15 hops on packets. Any packet that reaches the sixteenth hop will be dropped. RIPv1 is a classful protocol. RIP supports up to six equal-cost paths to a single destination. Equal-cost path are the paths where the metric is same (Hop count).

Routing Information Protocol (RIPv2)

RIPv2 is a distance vector routing protocol with routing enhancements built into it, and it is based on RIPV1. Therefore, it is commonly called as hybrid routing protocol.

RIPv2 uses multicasts instead of broadcasts. RIPv2 supports triggered updates. when a change occurs, a RIPv2 router will immediately propagate its routing information to its connected neighbours. RIPv2 is a classless protocol and it supports variable-length subnet masking (VLSM).

Both RIPv1 and RIPv2 uses hop count as the metric.

Differences between RIPv1 and RIPv2

RIPv1

• Supports only classful routing (Does not support VLSM).

• No authentication.

• RIPv1 uses Broadcast.

RIPv2

• Supports classless routing (Supports VLSM). RIPv2 incorporates the addition of the network mask in the update to allow classless routing advertisements.

• Authentication is available.

• RIPv2 uses multi-cast instead of broadcast. multicast communication reduces the burden on the network devices that do not need to listen to RIP updates.