Difference between RIP and OSPF

The world is now full of networks and indeed these networks help us to move faster with respect to the communication. Communication is the basis of Information technology driven world, each of us is relying on it in somehow or the other. Protocols are the set of rules that define how transmission takes place in different networks and devices. For example, you might have heard about the commonly used Internet Protocols such as TCP (Transmission Control Protocol), HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol), etc. The list is long and we have protocols specific for every purpose. In a similar manner, we have protocols to instruct routers about how it should handle the incoming and the outgoing traffic. We are going to look into the difference between RIP and OSPF now, and they nothing but the router protocols. Before we jump to the topic directly, let us have a short discussion on what they are!

What is a protocol?

As we have discussed above, a protocol is a set of instructions to a computer or any device about how it carries out the communication. The communication could happen in any of the transmission channels such as wired, or wireless. The protocols are the essential elements to make interactions between computers or devices happen. Example, TCP (Transfer Control Protocol), FTP (File Control Protocol), IP (Internet Protocol), DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol), POP (Post Office Protocol), SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol), etc.

What is a Routing Protocol?                                

Routing protocols are responsible for finding the proper or faster routes to communicate between computers in a network or the Internet. The routing protocols intelligently transfer data between different nodes of a network by identifying not only the fastest route but also an optimal route.

How does it work?

All the routing protocols work with a similar procedure and let us take a closer look at it now.

• As soon as a transmission is to be handled, a routing protocol first analyzes the possible routes for the transmission to happen. There might be only one route or many routes based on the network in which the only designed to device or computer is present.
• The next step is to determine the best possible route from the available list of routes that have been determined earlier. The routing protocols not only identify only one best but also pick the next-next better choices as well. Those choices are useful when the best route is not available at present or if there is more traffic on that particular route.
• Now the actual transmission takes place with the help of the already identified route combinations.

What is RIP?

The Routing Internet Protocol (RIP) was developed in the 1980s and it was specifically designed to handle transmissions in small or medium sized networks. RIPs are possible of taking 15 HOPs at a maximum.  Yes, it could jump from one node to the other in the network at a maximum of 15 times to reach the destination. Any Router with RIP as its Protocol first requests the Routing Table from its neighboring devices. Those devices respond to the router with its own routing tables and these tables are later consolidated and updated in the router’s table space. The router does not stop with that and it keeps on requesting such information from the devices at regular intervals. These intervals are usually 30 seconds. The traditional RIPs has supported only the Internet Protocol v4 (IPv4) but the newer versions of RIP also supports the IPv6. Our discussion is not complete without mentioning the port number as every protocol has its own port number to carry out the transmission. The RIP uses UDP 520 or 521 to carry out its transmissions.

What is OSPF?

The Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) protocol, as its name suggests, is capable of identifying the shortest path to go ahead with the data transfers. It is really advantageous over the RIP for certain reasons and we would mention here some of them. The RIP has a limitation of 15 hops to carry out the transmission and such as restriction is really hard to achieve in the case of larger networks. So we obviously need a better routing protocol to overcome this issue. That’s how this OSPF emerged exclusively for larger networks. There is no such smaller limitation on the number of hops used during the transmission with OSPF.

How does it work?

• The router that uses OSPF first sends certain routing information to and forth between them. They never send the entire routing table instead they just send only the necessary routing information to carry out the transmissions.
• It is a kind of link state protocol and is out of the scope of our discussion here. We should keep in mind that the OSPF is a better one to find the shortest routing paths between devices in a network.

Difference between RIP and OSPF

• Network table construction: The RIP requests the routing table from different neighboring devices of the router that uses RIP. Later, the router consolidated that information and constructs its own routing table. This table is sent to those neighboring devices at a regular interval of time and the consolidated routing table of the router is updated. In the case of OSPF, the routing table is constructed by the router just by getting few required information from the neighboring devices. Yes, it never gets the entire routing table of the devices and the routing table construction is really simpler with OSPF.
• Which type of Internet Routing Protocol? The RIP is a distance Vector protocol whereas the OSPF is a link state protocol. A distance vector protocol uses the distance or hops count to determine the transmission path and obviously, the RIP is one of its kinds. The link state protocol is slightly complex when compared to the former as it analyzes different sources like the speed, cost and path congestion while identifying the shortest path. It uses an algorithm called the Dijkstra.
• Hop count restriction: The RIP allows only up to 15 hops on a maximum and it was set to avoid long waits by the router. But there is no such maximum count restriction with the OSPF.
• The Network Tree: It is just the OSPF equivalent if the routing table constructed by the RIP but the information in it really differs from what has been in RIP. Yes, the OSPF router keeps it as the root node and then constructs a tree map to denote the paths between the other devices in the network. This network tree is often referred to as the shortest path tree.
• The algorithm used: The RIP routers use the distance vector algorithm whereas the OSPF uses the shortest path algorithm to determine the transmission routes. One such shortest path algorithm is the Dijkstra.
• Network classification: In RIP, the networks are classified as areas and tables. In OSPF, the networks are classified as areas, sub areas, autonomous systems and backbone areas.
• Complexity level: The RIP is relatively simpler whereas the OSPF is a complex one.
• When is it Best suited? The RIP is best suited for smaller networks as it has hop count restrictions. The OSPF is best for larger networks as there is no such restriction.

Let us look at those differences between RIP and OSPF in a tabular form.

That’s the difference between RIP and OSPF, the routing protocols! Few find the former to be perfect for their router whereas the others take the latter into consideration. Make much out of it by using the right one for your networks!

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