best choise between RIP and OSPF

Hi Mario,

There are many factors that would determine the answer to this question. I note that you say RIP (classfull) rather than RIPv2 (classless), OSPF being also a classless routing protocol.

Your main point refers to (1) Processing and (2) Bandwidth usage

OSPF is more processor intensive and is typically deployed in larger organisations but that doesn't mean it couldn't be deployed in smaller scenarios.

RIP is more chatty that OSPF (RIP broadcasts it's routing table every 30 x seconds - NB can be set to unicast using the neighbour command) whereas OSPF is multicast by nature and sends updates on a topology change (OSPF of course will send Hello packets every n x seconds depending on the type of network).

OSPF allows for route summarisation, RIP does not (NB RIPv2 does) so you could argue that less bandwidth usage for OSPF updates..

RIP has a hop count limit of 15 so I personally find it's suits smaller deployments, however, a number of MPLS carriers that I have instaleld for would ordanarily give us the choice of running RIPv2 or BGP.

Regards

Darren

RIP was designed when memory, bandwith, and processing power was limited. Now that these things are more then adequate to support OSPF it is a superior routing protocol. I would use OSPF for almost everything unless someone else decides they want to use RIP. Otherwise use OSPF in all circumstances.

RIP responds more (much more!) slowly to topology changes where a route disappears than OSPF does. When a new route is added you won't notice much difference. For RIP bad news travels slowly, good news travels quickly. That may or may not matter to you.

Sam

If your only considerations are router CPU and WAN bandwidth, your first choice should be static. Since you did not offer that option, I assume you also have other requirements which are not mentioned which could have a major impact on your choice. For example: you can tune either RIP or OSPF to use arbitrarily small (on the average) amounts of CPU and bandwidth, but I doubt you would be happy with the response to topology changes.

Good luck and have fun!