Advantages of RIPng, OSPFv3, and IS-IS

The biggest advantage of using RIPng is that it is relatively simple to understand and implement, and it has been the de facto routing standard for many years.

RIPng has a number of limitations that can cause problems in large networks, including the following:

• A limit of 15 hops between the source and destination networks
• A large amount of bandwidth taken up by periodic broadcasts of the entire routing table
• Slow convergence
• Routing decisions based on hop count; no concept of link costs or delay
• Flat networks; no concept of areas or boundaries

OSPFv3 and IS-IS offer many advantages over RIPng, including the following:

• No limitation on hop count
• Route updates multicast only when changes occur
• Faster convergence
• Support for load balancing to multiple routers based on the actual cost of the link
• Support for hierarchical topologies where the network is divided into areas

The details of RIPng are explained later in this chapter.