Comparison of Routing Protocols RIP, OSPF and EIGRP

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1 Comparison of Routing Protocols RIP, OSPF and EIGRP Kamal Grover 1, Palak Bansal 2, RanjanVenkatachala Shetty 3 1 Department of Computer Science and Engineering, National Institute of Technology Jalandhar 2 Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Ottawa 3 Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Ottawa ABSTRACT In communication network, routing protocols are used to determine the shortest path to destination. In this paper we are comparing the performance of RIP, OSFP and EIGRP routing protocol and then suggesting the best routing protocol for the given topology [1]. EIGRP, OSPF and RIP are the dynamic routing protocols being used in the practical networks to propagate network topology information to the neighboring routers [2]. We have implemented OSPF protocol for inter- networking between networks of a company present in different locations around the world. The headquarters of the company is present in Mumbai and Boston. After the implementation, the comparison is made by using different researches and simulations of OSPF routing protocol between routing protocols. Finally, it is concluded that choice of routing protocol depends on different critical parameters like convergence time, scalability, memory and CPU requirements, security and bandwidth requirement etc. Keywords:Communication network, Protocols, routing 1. INTRODUCTION Computer networking has grown rapidly during last few decades. This also evolved the need of file sharing, video conferencing and chatting. In the practical networks, the internet service providers rely on dynamic routing protocols to update the routing table of routers. These routers are used to control and forward the data. While communicating, the routers must know to which direction it should forward the packets to that they could reach to their destination.to make this routing effective the routing protocols should be chosen wisely. The main factors that differentiates two routing protocols is to adapt quickly to network changes, ability to choose best routing route and reduce traffic. Root cause of degradation of service performance in networking is network Congestion, link failures, and routing instabilities [3]. Most of problems occur during the routing changes. This disruption lasts few seconds long for interrupt- in web transfers. During this routing packets are dropped, delayed and received out of order [4]. So, to avoid this problem, it becomes important to analyze different routing protocols. These protocols enhance speed of data transfer in network. Their performance can be determined by convergence time. In this paper, we are implementing OSPF routing protocol and comparing it to RIP and EIGRP. The remaining portion is organized as follows. Section 2 describes types of routing protocols that is RIP, OSFP and EIGRP. Section 3 tells how we implemented OSPF routing protocol. It explains switching protocol, network optimization and test plan used while implementing it. Section 4 compares results obtained in implementation to other routing protocols like RIP and EIGRP. Section 5 concludes the paper. 2. ROUTING PROTOCOLS The routing occurs on network layer. Routing protocols are used to specify how routers communicate with each other, learn about available routes, built routing tables and decisions and share information with neighbors. Routers are used to connect multiple networks. The protocol determines the best route to the destination. The routers use routing tables to identify the routes to network destination. The goal is to achieve the fastest way to update the routing tables. The protocol has the information about which router is connected across the network and uses this to make routing decision [5]. Distance vector and link state are two terms which are used to group routing protocols based on factor whether routing protocol selects best route by distance metric or best routing path by calculating state of each link in the path. Routers Volume 6, Issue 2, February 2017 Page 8

which uses distance vector share information with other routers in network [6]. Types of routing protocols: there are two kinds of routing protocols 1. Static: in this case the network is fixed.

2 which uses distance vector share information with other routers in network [6]. Types of routing protocols: there are two kinds of routing protocols 1. Static: in this case the network is fixed. (there are no nodes added or removed) 2. Dynamic: Changes are allowed in this case by allowing updates on routing table. These are quite scalable and adaptable. RIP, OSPF and EIGRP are dynamic in nature. 2.1 RIP(Routing Information Protocol) It is first routing protocol which was implemented on TCP/IP. It uses distance- vector algorithm. It uses hop count method to find optimal path for routing. It needs less RAM and CPU power. The maximum hop count allowed in this case is 16 hops. It calculates best path based on the hop count. Then update process is used to tell router which is best route and should be used. This protocol can be used for dynamic routing [1]. RIP is generally not preferred as its convergence time is poor as compared to other protocols. However, it is simple protocol and it is easy to implement. 2.2 OSPF (Open Shortest Path First) It keeps track of complete topology database of all connection in database. The routers send hello packets to all neighbors and receive hello packets in return and in this way, it establishes routing connections by synchronizing databases. At regular interval, each router sends update messages to router to know if the neighbor router is active [7]. It detects topology changes quickly and can modify parameters. It is complex routing protocol. Here all routers exchange link state which is stored in link state database. For example, like in topology link database is stored in every router and determines the Shortest Path Tree to all the destinations. It uses Dijkstra shortest path algorithm to calculate the shortest path. Figure 1Topology of OSPF 2.3 EIGRP(Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol) It is called hybrid protocol as it uses advanced distance vector algorithm and link state protocol. Full routing information is exchanged only once when there is neighbor establishment. It reduces traffic by using need based updates. It passes the partial updates to routers and does so only when routing changes. It also keeps copies of routing table of neighborhood. This protocol is only compatible with Cisco Technology [8]. It uses metrics like bandwidth, delay, reliability and load to make decisions. It uses bandwidth in better way. This protocol has more complete view of network than any typical distance protocol. The diffusing update algorithm is used to obtain loop-freedom. This allows all routers to not be affected by topology changes. Fig. 2 depicts the protocol structure of EIGRP packet. 3.IMPLEMENTATION OF RIP PROTOCOL 3.1 Project Design Each host represented below is a department in each location. US router is a location router, which connects Boston Router and New York router. There is a location router for Asia, which connects Mumbai router and Beijing router. Router dedicated to Europe connects to London. Frame relay WAN technology is used to connect the location routers US, Asia and Europe. OSPF routing protocol is used. Volume 6, Issue 2, February 2017 Page 9

Figure 2 OSPF Packet Format [9] Figure 3 Topology of network created Figure 4 Headquarters:Boston Boston and Mumbai office are the HQ for the organization.

3 Figure 2 OSPF Packet Format [9] Figure 3 Topology of network created Figure 4 Headquarters:Boston Boston and Mumbai office are the HQ for the organization. Each office has three departments namely Finance, HR andtechnical. Requirement is of 250 employees with 85 percentredundancy in each office; hence, we need 463 IP addresses.so /23 subnet is used. Boston Network: /23 MumbaiNetwork: / Switching protocols VLANS are used to differentiate the departments. HR, finance and Technical departments are assigned VLAN 10, 20 and 30 respectively. DHCP server present in the technical department is responsible for allocation of IP addresses to all the terminals. VLAN 10: Fa0/3-9 HR VLAN 20: Fa0/10-17 Finance VLAN 30: Fa0/18-24 Technical Switch(config)vlan 10 Switch(config-vlan)name HR Switch(config)interface range fa0/3-9 Switch(config-range)switchport mode access Switch(config-range)switchport access vlan 10 Trunk interface is configured to connect router to switch which carries data for all vlans. Switch(config)int fa0/0 Volume 6, Issue 2, February 2017 Page 10

4 Switch(config-if)switchport mode trunk Switch(config-if)switchport trunk allow vlan 10,20, Routing protocols Routing protocol OSPF is used to communicate among the routers.the routing protocol is configured as below. Router(config)router ospf 1 Router(config-router)network area 1 The trunk interface of the router connected to switch is configured with 3 sub-interfaces to carry data of all 3 vlans. HSRP is used to provide redundancy. command ip helper-address is used to give access to DHCP present in VLAN 30. Active: Router(config)int fa0/0.10 Router(config-subif)encapsulation dot1q 10 Router(config-subif)ip address Router(config-subif)ip helper-address Router(config-subif)standby 1 ip Router(config-subif)standby 1 priority 210 Router(config-subif)standby 1 preempt Router(config-subif)standby 1 track fa 0/0 Router(config)int fa0/0 Router(config-if)no shutdown Standby: Router(config)int fa0/0.10 Router(config-subif)encapsulation dot1q 10 Router(config-subif)ip address Router(config-subif)ip helper-address Router(config-subif)standby 1 ip Router(config-subif)standby 1 priority 200 Router(config-subif)standby 1 preempt Router(config-subif)standby 1 track fa 0/0 Router(config)int fa0/0 Router(config-if)no shutdown New York,London and Beijing office New York, London and Beijing offices has two departments namely HR and Technical. Requirement is of 250 employees with 85 New York Network: /23, London Network: /23, Beijing Network: /23. Figure 5New York Office Volume 6, Issue 2, February 2017 Page 11

3.2 WAN Configuration 3.2.1 Frame Relay Router(config)int s2/0 Router(config-subif)encapsulation frame-relay Router(config-subif)bandwidth 64 Router(config-subif)interface s2/0.

5 3.2 WAN Configuration Frame Relay Router(config)int s2/0 Router(config-subif)encapsulation frame-relay Router(config-subif)bandwidth 64 Router(config-subif)interface s2/0.102 point-to-point Router(config-subif)frame-relay interface dcli 102 Router(config-subif)ip address These configuration are made on all 3 continent routers. Table 1: DLCIsUsed US Europe Asia Access-Lists Access Control Lists (ACL) is a list of permissions attached to an object. An ACL will indicate which users are granted access to which locations in the network, used on active and standby routers in HQs on the interface going to finance dept. Extended access-list used on Boston active router: Router(config-subif) encapsulation frame-relay Router(config-subif) bandwidth 64 Router(config-subif) interface s2/0.102 point-to-point Router(config-subif) frame-relay interface dcli 102 Router(config-subif)ip address These configurations are made on all 3 continent routers. Figure 6Boston to Mumbai finance Volume 6, Issue 2, February 2017 Page 12

3.2.3 IP Addresses Requirement is of 250 employees with 85. Figure 7Boston HR office to Boston finance Table 2: Boston: 101.0.0.0/23 Boston Finance HR Technical IP Range 101.0.0.0-101.0.0.0-101.0.0.128-101.

6 3.2.3 IP Addresses Requirement is of 250 employees with 85. Figure 7Boston HR office to Boston finance Table 2: Boston: /23 Boston Finance HR Technical IP Range Subnet Mask Defaultgateway VLAN Table 3: Mumbai: /23 Boston Finance HR Technical IP Range Subnet Mask Defaultgateway VLAN Table 4: New York : /23 Boston HR Technical IP Range Subnet Mask Default / /25 gateway / /25 VLAN Volume 6, Issue 2, February 2017 Page 13

7 Table 5: IP address at Active/Standby routers towards gateway router Active Router Network Standby Router Network Boston / /25 Mumba i / /25 Table 6: IP Addresses of DHCP servers in the technical areas Office Name IP Address of DHPC server Boston London New York Beijing London Table 7: City-city and city-continent interfaces City-continent IP Range Subnet Mask Boston-US New York-US London- Europe Mumbai-Asia Beijing-Asia Test Plan for the network a. Hosts are connected to the switches in each network. DHCP is configured for the host to get the IP assigned to each host. IP default gateway and subnet mask is assigned from the DHCP server. b. The switch is configured for different VLANS. c. Configuredthe switches and the routers with full duplex processing d. The routing table is checkedto verify all routes. d. HSRP was tested and successfully implemented by using activeand standby routers. This was tested by shutting individual links from the switch tothe router. e. To check security, ping from finance department and ping is allowed. Anyother department when tries to ping finance,ping will fail. 4COMPARISON OF SIMULATION RESULTSOF OSPF, RIP AND EIGRPPROTOCOLS We have implemented the packet tracer for the OSPF protocol; we are now comparing the different factors of OSPF protocol with RIP and EIGRP protocols. Below are thecomparison factors that we have considered to find out the best protocol in terms of performance. First is Convergence-To measure the speediness of the protocols on smallmesh topology and large mesh topology and tree topology and second is Traffic onrouters. The simulation of the performance of three protocols is evaluated on three topologies small mesh, large mesh topology and tree topology. We have obtained results of the OSPF from our implementation, but the results of RIP and EIGRP is obtained from [10]. 4.1Convergence We executed the simulation on the small mesh topology for three protocols and results are shown in Figure 3.1. As we can see in the graph, the 3 peaks in the graph represent about the three different identities such as initialization, failure, recover. The wider the peak of the graph the slower is the convergence, basically the width of the peak represents the convergence time of the individual protocol. From the graph, we can understand that EIGRP is performing better than Volume 6, Issue 2, February 2017 Page 14

2 Execution of simulation on large mesh topologies We executed the simulation on the small mesh topology for three protocols and results are shown in Figure 3.1.

8 any other protocols so it can have considered as fastest and the RIP protocol is considerably slow than EIGRIP. However, the OSPF is the slowest among all three protocols which is clear from the graph. Figure 8 Overlay Convergence action on small mesh topology 4.2 Execution of simulation on large mesh topologies We executed the simulation on the small mesh topology for three protocols and results are shown in Figure 3.1. As we can see in the graph, the results on large mesh topologies didn't make any difference for EIGRP protocol performance; even in this case the EIGRP stands first. Whereas in case of OSPF the difference of peaks obtained is not substantial in both the cases (Small and Large Mesh topologies). However, the performance of RIP has changed based on our assumption of its number of hop's limit to 15. The RIP stands in last position (i.e. slowest) in case of large mesh topology in case of the failure in the link between the hops; as we can the convergence of the RIP is very large failure when compared to OSPF and EIGRIP. Figure 9 Overlay Convergence action on large mesh topology 4.3 Execution of simulation on large tree topologies With the graph obtained from the data transmission on the tree topology, we can conclude that EIGRP is the fastest protocol when compared to RIP and EIGRP protocol. The performance of the RIP protocol is better than the OSPF in tree, because the initialization time required for RIP is less than OSPF, but little more than EIGRP. The failure convergence period is completely different from the mesh which is EIGRP>OSPF>RIP, however the difference of these is not substantial. With this we can say that EIGRP is fastest, RIP stands in last position and OSPF is faster than RIP. Volume 6, Issue 2, February 2017 Page 15

It is suitable for the small network which provides the best throughput compared to tree and mesh large networks. Figure 11 RIP average convergence time 4.

9 Figure 10 Overlay Convergence action on tree 4.4 Average convergence duration of individual protocol Average convergence duration for RIP In case of very large mesh networks RIP performance is downgraded due to its feature of updating the status 30 seconds. It is suitable for the small network which provides the best throughput compared to tree and mesh large networks. Figure 11 RIP average convergence time Average convergence duration for EIGRP The graph (figure 12) we can see the EIGRP protocol doesn't have any differences orimprovements when it was executed on different topologies. The difference of the convergence duration is around milli seconds (0.02) which is very less. Volume 6, Issue 2, February 2017 Page 16

Figure 12 EIRGP average convergence time 4.

10 Figure 12 EIRGP average convergence time Average convergence duration for OSPF In case of OSPF the initialization of the network in small mesh network is little faster than other topologies, however at the high level the performance is quite same in all three protocols which is depicted in figure 13. Figure 13OSPF average convergence time 4.5 Average convergence duration of individual protocol In this section, we discuss about the graphs obtained for 3 protocols on small mesh, large, mesh and large tree topologies Traffic on small mesh topology when data is sent at bits/sec inospf, RIP and EIGRP In case of OSPF the initialization of the network in small mesh network is little faster than other topologies, however at the high level the performance is quite same in all three protocols which is depicted in figure 14. As we saw from earlier graphs that OSPF had larger convergence time due to link failure and recovery because the OSPF will exchange lot information for the initial setup, in case of the graphs obtained for the traffic also shows that initial peaks are having highest peak that is the initial peak, followed by the peak which is due to the link failures and the last one is due the recovery. From the graph, we can see the EIGRP is having the best b/w efficiency and the RIP is having the poor b/w performance because we know that RIP sends the updates 30 secs to all nodes and OSPF falls between the RIP and EIGRP. Volume 6, Issue 2, February 2017 Page 17

Figure 14 Traffic on small mesh topology 4.5.

11 Figure 14 Traffic on small mesh topology Traffic on large mesh topology when data is sent at bits/sec in OSPF, RIP and EIGRP We utilized extensive mesh topology; we can unmistakably tell that the throughput for every convention has expanded. It is because the quantity of switches utilized as a part of this topology is expanded. Toward the starting, OSPF has a throughput of 0.52Mbps, yet EIGPR just has 0.2 Mbps. As we said that OSPF utilizing link state and EIGRP utilizing advanced (hybrid) as a part of the presentation, like state requires delineating the entire system toward the starting. Likewise, we take note of that when failure happens the EIGRP has higher throughput when compared to OSPF. In any case, when recuperation happens the throughput is higher than EIGRP, which is the same circumstance as the underlying. Concerning data transfer capacity proficiency, OSPF and EIGRP has much higher transmission capacity productivity than RIP. Every 30 seconds, RIP squanders around 0.11Mbps, so we understand RIP is not suitable for large networks. Figure 15 Traffic on large mesh topology Traffic on large tree topology when data is sent at bits-sec inospf, RIP and EIGRP In case of OSPF the initialization of the network in small mesh network is little faster than other topologies, however at the high level the performance is quite same in all three protocols which is depicted in figure 6.Even in the case of tree topology we can see large throughput of 1 Mbps for OSPF at the very beginning where the EIGRP is having every less throughput. As discussed earlier, OSPF will make use of the link state and EIGRP uses the hybrid configurations. In Volume 6, Issue 2, February 2017 Page 18

12 case of the failure and recovery the EIGRP perform better and has higher performance than OSPF. If we consider in terms of the bandwidth efficiency also EIGRP and OSPF performs better than RIP. With this what we can understand is RIP is not suitable for large networks, it works best in small network. References Figure 16 Traffic on large mesh topology [1]. Dynamic routing protocol implementation decision between eigrp, ospf and rip based on technical background using opnet modeller," Conference Paper on Computer and Network Technology, IEEE, April 2010 [2]. Nfv-an introduction, benefits, enablers, challenges and call for action," Paper, IEEE, October [3]. Catherine Boutremans, Gianluca Iannaccone and Christophe Diot, Impact of link failures on voip performance," p. 6, May [4]. Performance comparison of eigrp/is-is and ospf/is-is," vol. Blekinge Institute of Technology, p. 102, November [5]. Syed Hamza M Rufa, \Simulation and testing of routing protocols," vol. Simon Fraser University, p. 22, Spring [6]. Kiavash Mirzahossein,Michael Nguyen and Sarah Elmasry, \Analysis of rip, ospf, and eigrp routing protocols using opnet," vol. Simon Fraser University. [7]. Pankaj Rakheja, Prabhjot kaur,anjali gupta and Aditi Sharma, Performance analysis of rip, ospf, igrp and eigrp routing protocols in a network," vol. 48. No.18, p. 6, [8]. Enhanced interior gateway routing protocol draft-savage-eigrp-00.txt. [Online]Available: [9]. Chandra Wijaya,Parahyangan Catholic University, \Performance analysis of dynamic routing protocol eigrp and ospf in ipv4 and ipv6 network," vol First International Conference on Informatics and Computational Intelligence, pp [10]. Justin Deng,Siheng Wu and Kenny Sun, \Comparison of rip, ospf and eigrp routingprotocols based on opnet," vol. 48{No.18, p. 25, Volume 6, Issue 2, February 2017 Page 19

Comparison of EIGRP, RIP and OSPF Routing Protocols based on OPNET

ENSC 427: COMMUNICATION NETWORKS Final Project Presentation Comparison of EIGRP, RIP and OSPF Routing Protocols based on OPNET http://www.sfu.ca/~sihengw/ensc427_group9/ Siheng Wu 301153928 (sihengw@sfu.ca)