RIP is also known as Routing Information Protocol and it is a dynamic and distance vector protocol that uses the hop counts. It is stable, widely supported and easy to configure protocol. It uses the UDP port number 520 for the route updates. RIP is used to route the traffic on the WAN and on the Internet. It uses the traffic metrics to measure the IP traffic routes. It has been classified as the Interior Gateway Protocol by the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force).
By using the RIP as gateway host computer sends its entire routing table (that contains the information about all the hosts) to the nearest host. The nearest host sends this information to its nearest host and so on. In this way all the connected hosts get updated with the latest information. RIP is useful for the small networks and it has considered as obsolete as it has been replaced by other protocols such as OSPF (Open Shortest Path First) and IS-IS.
RIP sends the routing update messages to the adjacent hosts at the regular intervals. When a router receives some information that includes some changes it updates it’s routing table to reflect new changes.
After a router updates itself with the latest changes or information it frequently sends this updated information to the adjacent routers till all the routers gets updated. It supports maximum 15 routers/hopes in a network and it is considered as the best solution for the small homogeneous networks.
It uses the hop counts to measure the distance in the networks. Every RIP router sends updates to the next hops after every 30 seconds.
It runs at the network layer of the OSI layers model. A standard RIP packet includes the version, route tag, IP address, subnet mask, next hop and the command. Configuring a Cisco Router for RIP requires few configuration steps.
You need to enable the RIP routing protocol on the Cisco router and identify the network. The basic RIP configurations on the Cisco router include the following commands.
router> enable
Password:
router# conf t
router(config)#interface ethernet 0
router(config-if)# ip address 192.168.42.1
router(config-if)# interface ethernet 1
router(config-if)# ip address 192.168.43.1
router(config-if)# exit
router(config)# router rip
router(config-router)# network 192.168.42.0
router(config-router)# network 192.168.43.0
router(config-router)# exit
router(config-router)# ^z
router#
router(config)#interface ethernet 0
router(config-if)# ip address 192.168.42.1
router(config-if)# interface ethernet 1
router(config-if)# ip address 192.168.43.1
router(config-if)# exit
router(config)# router rip
router(config-router)# network 192.168.42.0
router(config-router)# network 192.168.43.0
router(config-router)# exit
router(config-router)# ^z
router#