Why is RIP still kicking?
One of my readers called RIP “Rest in Piece” routing. Although it’s probably the routing protocol that dinosaurs used to find their way around, it’s still useful in modern networks. Imagine that you have to deploy hundreds (or thousands) of low-cost remote sites with dual uplink capability (for backup purposes). They could be automated kiosks, point-of-sale terminals or even ATM machines.
If you’re infinitely lucky (and have huge budget), you could afford an ISR router at each location and use different design options that Cisco IOS gives you. In most cases, you have to work with devices that barely know what routing is … but you still need dynamic routing protocol to give them the ability to detect primary route failure and switch over to the backup route.
Assuming your purchasing department didn’t buy boxes that don’t have enough memory to run OSPF, you could usually choose between RIP and OSPF as the routing protocol … and I would always select RIP in this scenario. Let’s start with the “management-level” arguments: RIP is simpler to design (there is almost nothing to design) and troubleshoot than OSPF. It uses less memory and CPU cycles and I would also expect low-end boxes to have fewer bugs in RIP than in OSPF. More in-depth arguments are coming in the follow-up post.
Assuming your purchasing department didn’t buy boxes that don’t have enough memory to run OSPF, you could usually choose between RIP and OSPF as the routing protocol … and I would always select RIP in this scenario. Let’s start with the “management-level” arguments: RIP is simpler to design (there is almost nothing to design) and troubleshoot than OSPF. It uses less memory and CPU cycles and I would also expect low-end boxes to have fewer bugs in RIP than in OSPF. More in-depth arguments are coming in the follow-up post.