Comparative Analysis of the Re-Convergence Ability of RIP, OSPF and EIGRP Routing Protocols

Abstract

Computer networks is one of the widely used communication medium for systems remote interactions; and one of the rapidly growing technology since its abstract was first proposed. Routing has become the means for selecting a path for traffic in a network, or between multiple networks. The two types of routing protocols in existence include: static and dynamic routing; however this study pivots on the dynamic ones which include EIGRP, OSPF and RIP. These routing protocols running on routers continuously exchange network status between each other in order to move packets from one network-domain to the other. After the routing information distribution, the state of convergence is achieved. Any alteration within the network topology affects the distributed routing information; which breaks the convergence. Hence, the need for re-convergence to match the updated network topology.  During the time elapsed for re-convergence, packets traversing from one network domain to the other are loss. This study analyzes and performs a comparative analysis test for the different routing protocols namely: EIGRP, OSPF and RIP with respect to timely re-convergence ability with minimal packet loss using a designed network prototype. The analysis revealed that in the event of a convergence break, OSPF has the timely re-convergence ability with minimal packet loss rate followed by EIGRP and RIP.