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Re: [Misc][Rant] Internet router (straying slightly OT)

  • From: Patrick W. Gilmore
  • Date: Mon Oct 03 10:29:01 2005 
On Sep 30, 2005, at 11:53 AM, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
In message <[email protected]>, Randy Bush writes:
To get an understanding of routing-protocols, begin with RIP[3] and
perhaps run your own RIP-lab


necromancy will be severely punished.

many hand-on routing workshops start with rip, though with the
warning "you will now learn why not to use rip."  it makes it
easy to teach poison reverse, ... in a relatively small setting.

And it's much easier to understand, at least for a beginner.
I've been teaching routing protocols for a long time, and I almost always start with RIP for people who don't know what "protocol" means.

If you start with OSPF or IS-IS, you invariably get caught up in things like "what is 'link state'?" or "why does Shortest Path First take that path when it's 'longer'?" Plus any "Internet" engineer needs to know about things like hop-count before they can truly understand BGP.

Also, I usually include reasons to use RIP in a production network. They are few and far between, but RIP has properties which could be considered "features" when compared to other protocols.

--
TTFN,
patrick