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Dynamic routing

Static routing which was described at in the Static routing article has a the following critical disadvantages:

• scalability: the appearance of each adding a new router in the network requires changing the configuration of all existing nodes;
• operation: changes in the network will require updating the routing information on all network nodes;
• rapidityspeed: devices or links failure requires device or link failures require changes to the device routing tables of the devices, which must be done performed manually.

Dynamic routing protocols are free from all mentioned disadvantages of the static routing. Besides that, some of them have the following functionsadditional benefits:

• traffic balancing: if there are several paths for traffictowards the same destination, the router distributes balances the transmitted data between the communication channels, ensuring an even distribution of the devices and of the channels utilization;
• fault tolerance: automatic transition to the backup infrastructure in case of failure of the main one.

Dynamic routing protocols exchange routing information and update it automatically and, despite . Despite their basic functionality is being similar, the protocols can be classified in a the following way:

• By the application area:
  • internal: dynamic routing protocols used within an autonomous system, i.e. a set of devices and communication channels under common management (for example, ODR, RIP, OSPF);
  • external: dynamic routing protocols used to exchange routing information between autonomous systems (for example, BGP).
• By the operational principles:
  • distance-vector: exchange the routing tables, network nodes operate only with information about their direct neighbors and only with routing information received from them (for example RIP, ODR);
  • link state: exchange the whole topology tables, each network node operates with information about the structure of the entire network and can reproduce the whole entire scheme (for example, OSPF).

Dynamic routing protocols are supported by the Infinet InfiNet devices of the InfiLINK 2x2 and of the InfiMAN 2x2 families. All further examples will be provided for the devices of these families.

A In general, a separate module in the device's architecture is responsible for the operation of each dynamic routing protocol, however, for the operation of the RIP and OSPF modules protocols an ARDA module has been added (см. ARDA (Aqua Router Daemon)), which performs a coordination function and integration to the to with the general system (Figure 1). OSPF and RIP configuration is configurations are performed via ARDA.

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