CCNP® Practical Studies: Routing

Distance Vector and Link-State Routing Protocols

Now that you are aware of the routing methods available, this section looks at the two main types of routing methods that routers use to detect remote destinations dynamically.

Distance vector protocols (a vector contains both distance and direction), such as RIP, determine the path to remote networks using hop count as the metric. A hop count is defined as the number of times a packet needs to pass through a router to reach a remote destination. For IP RIP, the maximum hop is 15. A hop count of 16 indicates an unreachable network. Two versions of RIP exist: version 1 and version 2. IGRP is another example of a distance vector protocol with a higher hop count of 255 hops. A higher hop counts allows ...