What is RIP (Routing Information Protocol) | Difference Between RIP V1 and RIP V2 | Configure RIP on Cisco Router | Advantage and Disadvantage of RIP.

What is RIP (Routing Information Protocol)

RIP (Routing Information Protocol) is one of the oldest distance vector routing protocol. RIP works on the hop count, its only work within 15 hops if the destination is out from 15 hops that will be unreachable.

RIP Router receives a periodically updates from its neighbor routers and update its routing table. If any router crash between the RIP network and routing table is not update till 180 seconds then the RIP router will drop that route or network and starts finding new routes for the destination.

RIP prevents routing loops with using hop count facility as the maximum number of hops count is 15 and after 15 hops the network will be unreachable. Each RIP router sends an update to its neighbor in every 30 seconds.

For networking RIP is not considered for the big networks as its works within 15 hops small networks and as well as behind in comparison of other routing protocols such as OSPF, EIGRP, IS-IS. It can be configured easily as it doesn't need any parameters as much as the other protocols has required. 

RIP uses the User Datagram Protocol (UDP) as its transport protocol, and is assigned the reserved port number 520.

Types of RIP (Routing Information protocols)

RIP has three versions.

• RIP v1
• RIP v2
• RIPng

RIP v1 

RIP supports classful Routing which means it doesn't carry the subnet information while sending updates, lacking of VLSM (Variable Length Subnet Mask) not makes this version useful.

For VLSM & Classfull Routing click on below links.

What is VLSM

What is the difference between classful and Classless routing.

As this RIP version doesn't support classless routing reason being this version is not helpful as well as there is also no support for router authentication, making RIP vulnerable to various attacks.

RIP v2

This version of RIP supports classless routing means it has the ability to carry subnet information as it support CIDR (Classless Inter-Domain Routing). This protocol is used in some organizations but it has the same range of hop count 15. This version of RIP works on the multicast and avoid the unnecessary traffic in a network which makes is more reliable in comparison of RIP v1.

This is the reason RIP is in use in these days instead of RIP v1.

RIPng

RIPng (RIP next generation), is an extension of RIPv2 for support of IPv6, the next generation Internet Protocol.

Difference Between RIP v1 and RIP v2

RIPv1 is calssful routing protocol which means it doesn't send the subnet mask information while sending updates to its neighbor routers.

RIPv2 support VLSM, Thus its a classless routing protocol and send the subnet informaiton while sending updates.

RIPv1 routing updates are broadcasted.

RIPv2 routing updates are multicasted.

RIPv1 as no authentication

RIPv2 supports authentication (plain-text or MD5). Authentication helps in confirming that the updates are coming from authorized sources.

And finally:-

RIPv1 is not used anymore unless you work with dinosaur connected to your network.

RIPv2 is still used don't know which reason can leads you to configure RIPv2.

RIP Configuration on Cisco Router

To Configure RIP on Cisco routers follow below steps.

As below RIP v2 has configured below on Router A and Router B. Simply you just have typed rotuer rip to configure rip and after that set version and

now Associates a network with a RIP routing process i.e. 192.168.10.0 and 20.0 on other router then threre is other network route added and in last there is a command no-auto summary, this command is used to stops the default behaviour of the router if you do not disable this auto summary the router will automatically summarization of subnet routes into network-level routes so this is the reson we disable this command in router.

RouterA(config)#router rip

RouterA(config-router)#version 2

RouterA(config-router)#network 192.168.10.0

RouterA(config-router)#network 195.14.25.0

RouterA(config-router)#network 195.14.125.0

RouterA(config-router)#no auto-summary

To configure RIPv2 on RouterB we use the following commands:

RouterB(config)#router rip

RouterB(config-router)#version 2

RouterB(config-router)#network 192.168.20.0

RouterB(config-router)#network 195.14.25.0

RouterB(config-router)#network 195.14.125.0

RouterA(config-router)#no auto-summary

Now you will be able to access the destination from router A to Router B and vice versa.