Analysis of RIP, OSPF, and EIGRP Routing Protocols using OPNET Group 5: Kiavash Mirzahossein Michael Nguyen Sarah Elmasry

Introduction  Analyze the performance of the following routing protocols:  RIP: Routing Information Protocol  OSPF: Open Shortest Path First  EIGRP: Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol  Create small and large network topologies to evaluate the impact of network size on routing behavior  Objective: To compare the performance of RIP, OSPF, and EIGRP routing protocols and suggest best routing protocol for a given network topology 2

Routing Protocols  Routing occurs on the network layer  Routing Protocol:  Specify how routers communicate  Determines the best routing path to a destination  Routers use routing tables to identify routes to particular network destinations  Goal is to achieve fast convergence  Convergence: Process of updating routing tables  Types of Routing Protocols:  Static: network is fixed (no nodes added/removed)  Dynamic: changes allowed in topology using routing tables  Distance-vector vs. Link-state algorithms 3

Implementation  We implemented 4 network topologies on OPNET 16.0: 1.Small Ring 2.Small Mesh 3.Large Mesh 4.Large Tree  Each topology included a link failure at 300 seconds followed by a link recovery at 480 seconds  We obtained routing tables for the small ring topology  We compared the convergence and routing traffic sent results of RIP, OSPF and EIGRP on each network 4

Results  EIGRP has fastest convergence for all network topologies and uses bandwidth efficiency  OSPF:  Performs better than RIP on larger topologies  Converges faster after link failure than link recovery or initial network setup  RIP:  Only suitable for small networks  For large topologies RIP wastes bandwidth with full periodic updates 5