Overview

Routing Information Protocol (RIP) is a distance-vector IGP suited to small-sized networks. It employs UDP to exchange route information through port 520.

RIP uses a hop count to measure the distance to a destination. The hop count from a router to a directly connected network is 0. The hop count from a router to a directly connected router is 1. To limit convergence time, RIP restricts the value range of the metric from 0 to 15. A destination with a metric value of 16 (or greater) is considered unreachable. For this reason, RIP is not suitable for large-sized networks.