Unit 4

Routing in the Internet

Intra and Interdomain Routing

Intradomain Routing - All routers inside a domain utilize an intradomain routing protocol to
share routing information about the destinations that are accessible within the domain. There are
a number of intradomain routing protocols to choose from. A distance-vector protocol called RIP
is used by several domains. Other domains utilize OSPF or IS-IS, which are link-state routing
protocols. Finally, some domains utilize proprietary protocols like IGRP or EIGRP or use static
routing.
Intradomain routing methods often have two goals. They begin by disseminating routing
information that corresponds to the shortest path between two domain routers. Second, they
must enable routers to recover rapidly from link and router failures.

Interdomain Routing - An interdomain routing protocol's goal is to distribute routing

information between domains. An interdomain routing protocol must distribute aggregated
routing information for scalability considerations, and each domain is treated as a black box.

Key Interdomain Routing Intradomain Routing

Interdomain Routing, as name
suggests, is the protocol in which the
Definition
Routing algorithm works within and in
between the domains.
In case of Interdomain routing, the
Information interaction is across various domains,
Required so it requires information of
components of other domains.
In Interdomain Routing, Interior-
gateway protocols such as RIP
Protocols
(resource information protocol) and
Used
OSPF (open shortest path first) are
being used.
Internet connectivity should be
available both within the domain and
Prerequisite
in the domain with which the
interaction is taking place.
Interdomain Routing is more complex
Complex and
and more dependent as compared to
Dependent
Intradomain Routing.
Intradomain Routing is a protocol in
which the Routing algorithm works
only within the domains.
Intradomain Routing has to interact
within the domain, so it requires the
information of only those components
which are within the domain.
In Intradomain Routing, additional
exterior-gateway protocols such as
BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) are
used.
Internet connectivity should be
available within the domain and
during the transmission.
Intradomain Routing is less complex
and less interdependent than
Interdomain Routing.
 Unicast Routing Protocols – RIP, OSPF, BGP
Today, the internet can be so large that only one routing protocol cannot able to handle the task
of updating the routing tables of all routers. For this reason, the internet is mainly divided into
autonomous systems.
An autonomous system (AS) is a group of networks and routers under the authority of a single
administration. Routing inside any autonomous system is referred to as intradomain (or interior
routing) routing. Routing between autonomous systems is referred to as interdomain (or exterior
routing ) routing.

RIP
The well known interior protocols are RIP (Routing information protocol) and OSPF (Open
Shortest Path First). Whereas the popular exterior protocol used popularly is BGP (Border
Gateway Protocol).
Routing inside any autonomous system is referred to as intradomain routing. Routing between
autonomous systems is referred to as interdomain routing) and BGP is used for upgrading the
routing tables for the routers which join multiple AS together.

Routing Information Protocol (RIP) is an implementation of the distance vector protocol.In

distance vector routing, the least-cost route between any two nodes is the route with minimum
distance.
RIP is used for updating the routing tables. The routing updates are exchanged between the
neighboring routers every 30 seconds with the help of the RIP response message.
These messages are also known as RIP advertisements. These messages are sent by the routers or
hosts. They contain a list of multiple destinations within an autonomous system (AS). RIP is an
interior routing protocol used inside an autonomous system (AS). Its operation is based on
distance vector routing.

A typical routing table mainly consists of the following fields:

▪ Destination
▪ Hop Count
▪ Next Router
▪ Other Information
Every router is supposed to keep such a table within it. The destination column consists of the
destination network address. The hop count column basically consists of the shortest distance to
reach the destination and the next router column then consists of the address of the next router to
which the packet is to be forwarded.

Each node knows how to reach any other node. When a new router is added to a network it
initializes its routing table. Such a table consists of the information only about the directly
attached networks and the corresponding hop counts. The next-hop field i.e which identifies the
next router is empty.

RIP work is a combination of a routing database that stores information on the fastest route from
computer to computer.
 An update process that enables each router to tell other routers which route is the fastest from its
point of view and an update algorithm that enables each router in order to update its database
with the fastest route communicated from the neighboring routers.

OSPF
Routers connect networks using the Internet Protocol (IP), and OSPF (Open Shortest Path First)
is a router protocol used to find the best path for packets as they pass through a set of connected
networks.
The OSPF (Open Shortest Path First) protocol is one of a family of IP Routing protocols, and is
an Interior Gateway Protocol (IGP) for the Internet, used to distribute IP routing information
throughout a single Autonomous System (AS) in an IP network.

BGP
BGP is known as an exterior gateway protocol. It was designed to share routing information
between disparate networks, known as autonomous systems (ASes). When multiple BGP-derived
paths exist, the protocol chooses a path to send traffic based on several criteria, including the
following:
• the highest locally derived preference number, called a weight;
• the path with the highest local preference;
• path origin (network or aggregate);
• shortest AS path to the destination network;
• lowest multiexit discriminator; and
• preferred paths coming from intra-AS, such as internal BGP, or extra-AS, such as external
BGP.

OSPF vs BGP: What Are the Differences?

The main difference between OSPF and BGP is that OSPF is an intra-domain routing protocol
using link state routing, and the routing operation is performed inside an autonomous system
while BGP is the inter-domain routing protocol that uses path vector routing, with the routing
operations performed between two autonomous systems. Some other distinctions between OSPF
vs BGP include:
• Configuration: OSPF is easily-configured while BGP configuration is a lot more complex.
• Convergence rate: OSPF can achieve convergence (the time a router takes to share and update
the latest routing information) faster. In contrast, the BGP has a slow convergence rate.
• Network topology or design: OSPF is a type of hierarchical network topology or design while
BGP is a type of mesh topology or design.
• Resources requirement: OSPF requires intensive use of memory and CPU resources. With BGP
on the other hand, the size of the routing table dictates the required device resources.
• Scale: BGP is more flexible and scalable than OSPF and it is also used on a larger network.
• Preferred path: OSPF is used to determine the fastest route while BGP puts emphasis on
determining the best path.
• Protocol: In OSPF, internet protocol is used. While in BGP, transmission control protocol is
used.
Multicast Routing Protocols – MOSPF, DVMRP
MOSPF - Multicast Extension to OSPF (Open Shortest Path First)
 MOSPF, a multicast routing protocol, is an enhancement of the unicast routing protocol OSPF.
Intra-Area Routing describes the basic routing algorithm employed by MOSPF. This elementary
algorithm runs inside a single OSPF area and supports multicast forwarding when the source and
all destination group members reside in the same OSPF area, or when the entire Autonomous
System is a single OSPF area. MOSPF routers use the Internet Group Management Protocol
(IGMP) to monitor multicast group membership on directly attached subnetworks. MOSPF
routers are required to implement a "local group database" which maintains a list of directly
attached group members and determines the local router's responsibility for delivering multicast
datagrams to these group members.

DVMRP - Distance Vector Multicast Routing Protocol

The distance vector multicast routing protocol is multicast routing protocol that takes the routing
decision based upon the source address of the packet.
The DVMRP is used for multicasting over IP networks without routing protocols to support
multicast. The DVMRP is based on the RIP protocol but more complicated than RIP. DVRMP
maintains a link-state database to keep track of the return paths to the source of multicast
packages.
The DVMRP operates as follows:
• The first message for any source-group pair is forwarded to the entire multicast network, with
respect to the time-to-live (TTL) of the packet.
• TTL restricts the area to be flooded by the message.
• All the leaf routers that do not have members on directly attached subnetworks send back
prune messages to the upstream router.
• The branch that transmitted a prune message is deleted from the delivery tree.
• The delivery tree, which is spanning to all the members in the multicast group, is constructed.

Drawback of Traditional Routing Protocols –

One of the major disadvantages of traditional IP routing is per-packet inspection – each packet
needs to have its IP header information compared with the routing table before the router decides
which interface to forward the packet out of.

Traditional routing algorithms cannot satisfy the requirements of an ad hoc network, because of
the dynamic topology and the limited bandwidth that characterize these networks.

TE and Different Traffic Classes –

Traffic classification is an automated process which categorises computer network traffic
according to various parameters (for example, based on port number or protocol) into a number
of traffic classes. Each resulting traffic class can be treated differently in order to differentiate the
service implied for the data generator or consumer.
There are two general categories of network traffic: real-time and non-real-time. A traffic class
is a system wide collection of buffers, queues, and bandwidth that you can allocate to provide a
defined level of service to packets in the traffic class.
Packets are classified to be differently processed by the network scheduler. Upon classifying a
traffic flow using a particular protocol, a predetermined policy can be applied to it and other
flows to either guarantee a certain quality or to provide best-effort delivery Operators often
distinguish three broad types of network traffic: Sensitive, Best-Effort, and Undesired.

Sensitive traffic - Sensitive traffic is traffic the operator has an expectation to deliver on time.
This includes VoIP, online gaming, video conferencing, and web browsing. Traffic management
schemes are typically tailored in such a way that the quality of service of these selected uses is
guaranteed, or at least prioritized over other classes of traffic. This can be accomplished by the
absence of shaping for this traffic class, or by prioritizing sensitive traffic above other classes.

Best-effort traffic - Best effort traffic is all other kinds of non-detrimental traffic. This is traffic
that the ISP deems isn't sensitive to Quality of Service metrics (jitter, packet loss, latency). A
typical example would be peer-to-peer and email applications.[9] Traffic management schemes
are generally tailored so best-effort traffic gets what is left after sensitive traffic.

Undesired traffic- This category is generally limited to the delivery of spam and traffic created
by worms, botnets, and other malicious attacks. In some networks, this definition can include
such traffic as non-local VoIP (for example, Skype) or video streaming services to protect the
market for the 'in-house' services of the same type. In these cases, traffic classification
mechanisms identify this traffic, allowing the network operator to either block this traffic
entirely, or severely hamper its operation.

IP over ATM
Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) is a WAN technology that uses fixed length cells. ATM
cells are 53 bytes long, with a 5-byte header and 48-byte data portion. ATM allows reliable
network throughput compared to Ethernet.
Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) is a cell-switching, connection-oriented technology. In
ATM networks, end stations attach to the network using dedicated full duplex connections. The
ATM networks are constructed using switches, and switches are interconnected using dedicated
physical connections.
The crucial difference between ATM and IP protocols is that ATM is connection-oriented while
IP is connectionless. This means that the establishment of a connection between two endpoints in
ATM defines the route all cells related to that connection must travel.
When the IP packet arrives at the router in the ATM network, the IP packet is encapsulated into
the ATM cells. The number of ATM cells required to encapsulated an IP packet depends on the
size of the IP packet and the size of cells in the ATM network.

Multi Protocol Label Switching (MPLS)

Multiprotocol Label Switching, or MPLS, is a networking technology that routes traffic using the
shortest path based on “labels,” rather than network addresses, to handle forwarding over private
wide area networks.
Because MPLS-supporting routers only need to see the MPLS labels attached to a given packet,
MPLS can work with almost any protocol (hence the name "multiprotocol"). It does not matter
how the rest of the packet is formatted, as long as the router can read the MPLS labels at the
front of the packet.
MPLS is much faster than traditional IP Routing, as it is based on the concept of the label to
allow forwarding (rather switching) of packets. This type of forwarding is more efficient as it
avoids overloading the CPU.

Storage Area Networks (SAN)

SAN is an abbreviation of the Storage Area Network. Storage Area Network is a dedicated,
specialized, and high-speed network which provides block-level data storage. It delivers the
shared pool of storage devices to more than one server.
The main aim of SAN is to transfer the data between the server and storage device. It also allows
for transferring the data between the storage systems.Storage Area networks are mainly used for
accessing storage devices such as tape libraries and disk-based devices from the servers.
It is a dedicated network which is not accessible through the LAN. It consists of hosts, switches,
and storage devices which are interconnected using the topologies, protocols, and technologies.

Following are the most common protocols of SAN (Storage Area Network):

FCP (Fibre Channel Protocol) -It is the most commonly used protocol of the Storage Area
Network. It is a mapping of SCSI command over the Fibre Channel (FC) network.

ISCSI - It stands for Internet SCSI or Internet Small Computer System Interface. It is the second-
largest block or SAN protocol. It puts the SCSI commands inside an ethernet frame and then
transports them over an Internet protocol (IP) ethernet.

FCoE - FCoE stands for "Fibre Channel Over Internet". It is a protocol which is similar to the
iSCSI. It puts the Fibre channel inside the ethernet datagram and then transports over an IP
Ethernet network.

NVMe -NVMe stands for Non-Volatile Memory Express. It is also a protocol of SAN, which
access the flash storage by the PCI Express bus.

Following are the advantages or benefits of a Storage Area Network (SAN):

o It is more scalable.
o Security is also a main advantage of SAN. If users want to secure their data, then SAN is
a good option to use. Users can easily implement various security measures on SAN.
o Storage devices can be easily added or removed from the network. If users need more
storage, then they simply add the devices.
o The cost of this storage network is low as compared to others.
o Another big advantage of using the SAN (Storage Area Network) is better disk
utilization.