Routing Information Protocol
Alternative Format: Original Text Document
RFC 1058 Routing Information Protocol June 1988
all implementations of this protocol.
- Suggest some optional features to allow greater
configurability and control. These features were developed
specifically to solve problems that have shown up in actual
use by the NSFnet community. However, they should have more
general utility.
The Routing Information Protocol (RIP) described here is loosely
based on the program "routed", distributed with the 4.3 Berkeley
Software Distribution. However, there are several other
implementations of what is supposed to be the same protocol.
Unfortunately, these various implementations disagree in various
details. The specifications here represent a combination of features
taken from various implementations. We believe that a program
designed according to this document will interoperate with routed,
and with all other implementations of RIP of which we are aware.
Note that this description adopts a different view than most existing
implementations about when metrics should be incremented. By making
a corresponding change in the metric used for a local network, we
have retained compatibility with other existing implementations. See
section 3.6 for details on this issue.
1. Introduction
This memo describes one protocol in a series of routing protocols
based on the Bellman-Ford (or distance vector) algorithm. This
algorithm has been used for routing computations in computer networks
since the early days of the ARPANET. The particular packet formats
and protocol described here are based on the program "routed", which
is included with the Berkeley distribution of Unix. It has become a
de facto standard for exchange of routing information among gateways
and hosts. It is implemented for this purpose by most commercial
vendors of IP gateways. Note, however, that many of these vendors
have their own protocols which are used among their own gateways.
This protocol is most useful as an "interior gateway protocol". In a
nationwide network such as the current Internet, it is very unlikely
that a single routing protocol will used for the whole network.
Rather, the network will be organized as a collection of "autonomous
systems". An autonomous system will in general be administered by a
single entity, or at least will have some reasonable degree of
technical and administrative control. Each autonomous system will
have its own routing technology. This may well be different for
different autonomous systems. The routing protocol used within an
autonomous system is referred to as an interior gateway protocol, or
"IGP". A separate protocol is used to interface among the autonomous
Hedrick
