About RIP

The Routing Information Protocol, or RIP, as it is more commonly called, is one of the most enduring of all routing protocols. RIP has four basic components: routing update process, RIP routing metrics, routing stability, and routing timers. Devices that support RIP send routing-update messages at regular intervals and when the network topology changes. These RIP packets include information about the networks that the devices can reach, as well as the number of routers or gateways that a packet must travel through to reach the destination address. RIP generates more traffic than OSPF, but is easier to configure.

RIP is a distance-vector routing protocol that uses hop count as the metric for path selection. When RIP is enabled on an interface, the interface exchanges RIP broadcasts with neighboring devices to dynamically learn about and advertise routes.

The Secure Firewall Threat Defense device supports both RIP Version 1 and RIP Version 2. RIP Version 1 does not send the subnet mask with the routing update. RIP Version 2 sends the subnet mask with the routing update and supports variable-length subnet masks. Additionally, RIP Version 2 supports neighbor authentication when routing updates are exchanged. This authentication ensures that the Secure Firewall Threat Defense device receives reliable routing information from a trusted source.

RIP has advantages over static routes because the initial configuration is simple, and you do not need to update the configuration when the topology changes. The disadvantage to RIP is that there is more network and processing overhead than in static routing.