IP Routing Fundamentals

The Origins of IGRP

Until the early 1980s, internetworking was not broadly required by commercial organizations. They relied extensively on a hard-wired infrastructure, populated with dumb terminals, cluster controllers, and mainframes. Some organizations required internetworking capabilities—research groups or universities, for example—as did some commercial entities. The limited market requirements for internetworking technologies meant that the vast majority of existing networks were relatively small. Therefore, RIP enjoyed immense popularity.

The 1980s, however, witnessed several significant technological advances. Two of the most significant of these were the development of a standardized platform for desktop computing (a PC) and the emergence ...