Thursday, December 2, 2010

Routing Protocol vs Routed Protocol

We often hear the term routing protocol and routed protocol. These 2 protocols is sometimes confusing since they sound almost the same but have actually different meanings.

A routing protocol is a protocol that defines how routers should communicate with each other. It will send and receive information from other routers about its connection, metric, etc., in order to make the own router understand how to and where to send packets to and from other routers. The information itself will be updated if there are changes, in order to get the latest configuration system of the network. Examples of routing protocols are RIP, IGRP, EIGRP, and OSPF.

A routed protocol is a protocol that defines the format of a packet and what information it should contain in order to be able to be routed. For example, IP is a routed protocol. In an IP packet, source IP and destination IP should be available in the packet in order to be able to be read by the router, thus can be forwarded. So, a routed protocol is a packet protocol that can be routed by a rounting protocol. Other examples of a routed protocol is IPX, DECnet, Apple Talk, Banyard Vines, and Xerox Network System (XNS).

-- 3 December 2010 --

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