RIP Route Determination Algorithm and Metric

As I mentioned in the previous chapter, one of the defining characteristics of any routing protocol is the algorithm it uses for determining routes. RIP falls into the class of protocols that use a distance-vector, or Bellman-Ford, routing algorithm. To help you understand exactly how RIP determines routes, this section presents the specific implementation of the algorithm for RIP and provides an example.

Note that the description presented here is the basic algorithm used by RIP. This is modified in certain ways to address some of the problems that can occur in special circumstances due to how the algorithm works. Later in this chapter, we will explore these problems and the special features RIP includes ...

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