Difference between EIGRP and RIP

Last Modified: November 8, 2023

Table of Contents

Introduction

In a network, routers communicate with one another via different routing protocols available. Routing protocols help routers in order to choose the best path to a destination and also maintain the routing table. There are several types of routing protocols each with different functionalities, some of which are path vector, link state, and distance vector. In this blog, we will explain the basic difference between EIGRP and RIP, two well-known distance vector routing protocols.

Before getting into the difference between EIGRP and BGP, let’s understand them in detail.

What is EIGRP in Networking?

EIGRP stands for Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol. It is a Cisco proprietary protocol that was developed in order to overcome the limitations of IGRP (Interior Gateway Routing Protocol). EIGRP makes use of the Diffusing Update Algorithm (DUAL) to calculate the best route to a destination network based totally on multiple metrics that include bandwidth, delay, load, and reliability. EIGRP additionally helps unequal cost load balancing, which means that it may use more than one path with different costs to reach the identical destination.

To function properly, EIGRP maintains three tables in each router. These are:

Neighbor table: The neighbor table lists the adjacent routers that use EIGRP on the same network segment.
Topology table: The topology table contains all of the routes discovered from the neighbors, together with their metrics and feasibility conditions.
Routing table: The routing table consists of the best routes that are selected from the topology table, primarily based on the lower cost or the lowest possible distance.

EIGRP makes use of hello packets to establish and maintain neighbor relationships. It also uses update packets in order to advertise new or modified routes, query packets to request information about a destination network, respond packets to answer queries, and acknowledgment packets to confirm the receipt of updates, queries, or replies.

EIGRP has an administrative distance of 90, which means that it’s preferred over other routing protocols with higher values. EIGRP may be configured with an autonomous system (AS), which identifies a collection of routers that share the same routing information and policies.

What is RIP in Networking?

RIP stands for Routing Information Protocol. It is one of the oldest and handiest routing protocols, primarily based on the Bellman-Ford algorithm. RIP makes use of hop count as the only metric in order to measure the distance to a destination network. Hop count is the number of routers that a packet has to pass to reach its destination. RIP has a maximum hop count of 15, which means that any network that is more than 15 hops away is considered unreachable.

In order to function properly, RIP maintains two tables for every router available in a network segment. These are:

Routing Table: The routing table carries all the routes discovered from other routers alongside their hop counts. RIP makes use of updated packets to exchange routing information with different routers every 30 seconds. Each update packet includes up to 25 routes from the routing table.
Topology Table: In RIP, a topology table is a type of data structure used to hold details about the routes that are learned from other available RIP routers. By exchanging routing updates with nearby routers, the topology table is frequently updated. On a Cisco router, the command “show ip rip database” may be used to view the topology table. Based on the hop count measure, the topology table helps the router in choosing the optimum path to a destination network.

RIP has an administrative distance of 120, which means that it’s less preferred than different routing protocols available with lower values. RIP does not support areas or autonomous systems; however, it helps classful and classless addressing modes.

Now that we have a basic understanding of what EIGRP and RIP are. Let’s now move on to compare EIGRP vs RIP to understand their differences.

Difference between EIGRP and RIP

Below, we have compared EIGRP vs RIP in a tabular form for better understanding.

Factors	EIGRP	RIP
Full form	Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol	Routing Information Protocol
Algorithm	Diffusing Update Algorithm (DUAL)	Bellman-Ford algorithm
Standard	Cisco-proprietary routing protocol	Industry-standard routing protocol
Organization Size	EIGRP is best suitable for medium to large organizations’ networks	RIP is suited only for small organization’s network
Protocol Type	Hybrid Protocol (distance vector and link state)	Distance vector routing protocol
Maximum Hop Count	The maximum hop count in EIGRP is 255	The maximum hop count in RIP is 15
Administrative Distance	EIGRP AD is 90	RIP AD is 120
Metric Calculation	Based on bandwidth and delay	Based on the hop count
Tables Maintained	Neighbor table, topology table, and routing table	Routing table and Topology table
Autonomous System Support	Yes, using the AS number	No, RIP does not support AS
Symbol in Routing Table	EIGRP is denoted by ‘D’	RIP is denoted by ‘R’

Now, we have compared EIGRP vs RIP and understood the main difference between the two.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1. What is difference between EIGRP and OSPF?

EIGRP stands for Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol, and it uses various factors such as bandwidth, load, and delay in order to calculate the optimal path to a destination.

OSPF stands for Open Shortest Path First, which is a type of link-state routing protocol that uses the SPF algorithm in order to find the shortest path to a destination network.

Q2. What is the main difference between RIP and OSPF?

RIP stands for Routing Information Protocol and is a type of distance-vector routing protocol that makes use of hop count as the metric, whereas OSPF is a link-state routing protocol that makes use of bandwidth as the metric.

Q3. Why is EIGRP used?

Some of the reasons why EIGRP is used are:

It supports CIDR and VLSM.
It also supports multiple network layer protocols such as IPv4, IPv6, IPX, and AppleTalk.

Q4. What is the difference between BGP and OSPF and RIP?

BGP stands for Borger Gateway Protocol, which uses path attributes in order to determine the best route to a destination.

OSPF stands for Open Shortest Path First and is a link-state routing protocol that uses the SPF algorithm in order to determine the optimal path to a destination network.

RIP stands for Routing Information Protocol, which uses hop count as the metric in order to select the best path to a destination network.

Conclusion

In this blog, we have learned about the difference between EIGRP and RIP. We have seen that EIGRP is a more advanced and efficient routing protocol than RIP, as it uses multiple metrics, supports unequal cost load balancing, maintains multiple tables, and uses a smarter algorithm.

However, EIGRP is also more complex and requires more resources than RIP. RIP is a simple and easy-to-configure routing protocol, but it has many limitations and drawbacks, such as using only hop count, having a maximum hop count of 15, maintaining only one table, and using periodic updates.