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9.1: Prelude to Routing-Update Algorithms

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    11202
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    In the literature it is common to refer to router-table construction as “routing algorithms”. We will avoid that term, however, to avoid confusion with the fundamental datagram-forwarding algorithm; instead, we will call these “routing-update algorithms”.

    The two classes of algorithms we will consider here are distance-vector and link-state. In the distance-vector approach, often used at smaller sites, routers exchange information with their immediately neighboring routers; tables are built up this way through a sequence of such periodic exchanges. In the link-state approach, routers rapidly propagate information about the state of each link; all routers in the organization receive this link-state information and each one uses it to build and maintain a map of the entire network. The forwarding table is then constructed (sometimes on demand) from this map.

    Both approaches assume that consistent information is available as to the cost of each link (eg that the two routers at opposite ends of each link know this cost, and agree on how the cost is determined). This requirement classifies these algorithms as interior routing-update algorithms: the routers involved are internal to a larger organization or other common administrative regime that has an established policy on how to assign link weights. The set of routers following a common policy is known as a routing domain or (from the BGP protocol) an autonomous system.

    The simplest link-weight strategy is to give each link a cost of 1; link costs can also be based on bandwidth, propagation delay, financial cost, or administrative preference value. Careful assignment of link costs often plays a major role in herding traffic onto the faster or “better” links.

    In the following chapter we will look at the Border Gateway Protocol, or BGP, in which no link-cost calculations are made. BGP is used to select routes that traverse other organizations, and financial rather than technical factors may therefore play the dominant role in making routing choices.

    Generally, all these algorithms apply to IPv6 as well as IPv4, though specific protocols of course may need modification.

    Finally, we should point out that from the early days of the Internet, routing was allowed to depend not just on the destination, but also on the “quality of service” (QoS) requested; thus, forwarding table entries are strictly speaking not ⟨destination, next_hop⟩ but rather ⟨destination, QoS, next_hop⟩. Originally, the Type of Service field in the IPv4 header (7.1 The IPv4 Header) could be used to specify QoS (often then called ToS). Packets could request low delay, high throughput or high reliability, and could be routed accordingly. In practice, the Type of Service field was rarely used, and was eventually taken over by the DS field and ECN bits. The first three bits of the Type of Service field, known as the precedence bits, remain available, however, and can still be used for QoS routing purposes (see the Class Selector PHB of 20.7 Differentiated Services for examples of these bits). See also RFC 2386 [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2386.html].

    In much of the following, we are going to ignore QoS information, and assume that routing decisions are based only on the destination. See, however, the first paragraph of 9.5 Link-State Routing-Update Algorithm, and also 9.6 Routing on Other Attributes.


    9.1: Prelude to Routing-Update Algorithms is shared under a not declared license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by LibreTexts.

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