RFC 1388 (rfc1388) - Page 2 of 7

RIP Version 2 Carrying Additional Information

RFC 1388                     RIP Version 2                  January 1993


   Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
   Author's Address  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

1. Justification

   With the advent of OSPF and IS-IS, there are those who believe that
   RIP is obsolete.  While it is true that the newer IGP routing
   protocols are far superior to RIP, RIP does have some advantages.
   Primarily, in a small network, RIP has very little overhead in terms
   of bandwidth used and configuration and management time.  RIP is also
   very easy to implement, especially in relation to the newer IGPs.

   Additionally, there are many, many more RIP implementations in the
   field than OSPF and IS-IS combined.  It is likely to remain that way
   for some years yet.

   Given that RIP will be useful in many environments for some period of
   time, it is reasonable to increase RIP's usefulness.  This is
   especially true since the gain is far greater than the expense of the
   change.

2. Current RIP

   The current RIP packet contains the minimal amount of information
   necessary for routers to route packets through a network.  It also
   contains a large amount of unused space, owing to its origins.

   The current RIP protocol does not consider autonomous systems and
   IGP/EGP interactions, subnetting, and authentication since
   implementations of these postdate RIP.  The lack of subnet masks is a
   particularly serious problem for routers since they need a subnet
   mask to know how to determine a route.  If a RIP route is a network
   route (all non-network bits 0), the subnet mask equals the network
   mask.  However, if some of the non-network bits are set, the router
   cannot determine the subnet mask.  Worse still, the router cannot
   determine if the RIP route is a subnet route or a host route.
   Currently, some routers simply choose the subnet mask of the
   interface over which the route was learned and determine the route
   type from that.

3. Protocol Extensions

   This document does not change the RIP protocol per se.  Rather, it
   provides extensions to the datagram format which allows routers to
   share important additional information.






Malkin