We've covered the basics

of how routing works and how routing tables are constructed, and
they're both really pretty basic concepts. The real magic of routing is in the way
that routing tables are always updated with new information about the quickest
path to destination networks. The protocols we'll be learning about in
this video will help you identify routing problems on any network you might
support. In order to learn about
the world around them, routers use what are known
as routing protocols. These are special protocols the routers
use to speak to each other in order to share what information they might have. This
is how a router on one side of the
planet can eventually learn about the best path to a network on
the other side of the planet. Routing protocols fall into two main
categories, interior gateway protocols, and exterior gateway protocols. Interior
gateway protocols are further
split into two categories, link state routing protocols and
distance-vector protocols. In this video, we'll cover the basics
of interior gateway protocols. Interior gateway protocols are used by
routers to share information within a single autonomous system. In networking
terms, an autonomous system
is a collection of networks that all fall under the control of
a single network operator. The best example of this would be a large
corporation that needs to route data between their many offices an each of
which might have their own local area network. Another example is the many routers
employed by an Internet service provider who's reaches are usually
national in scale. You can contrast this with exterior
gateway protocols, which are used for the exchange of information between
independent autonomous systems. Spoiler alert, we'll cover exterior
gateway protocols in an upcoming video. The two main types of interior
gateway protocols are link state routing protocols and
distance-vector protocols. Their goals are super similar,
but the routers that employ them share different kinds of
data to get the job done. Distance-vector protocols
are an older standard. A router using a distance-vector protocol
basically just takes its routing table, which is a list of every
network known to it and how far away these networks
are in terms of hops. Then the router sends this list
to every neighboring router, which is basically every router
directly connected to it. In computer science,
a list is known as a vector. This is why a protocol that just sends a
list of distances to networks is known as a distance-vector protocol. With a
distance-vector protocol, routers don't really know that much about
the total state of an autonomous system, they just have some information
about their immediate neighbors. For a basic glimpse into how
distance vector protocols work, let's look at how two routers might
influence each other's routing tables. Router A has a routing table
with a bunch of entries. One of these entries is for
[Link]/24 network, which we'll refer to as Network X. Router A believes that the
quickest
path to Network X is through its own interface 2,
which is where Router C is connected. Router A knows that sending data
intended for Network X through interface 2 to Router C means it'll take four
hops to get to the destination. Meanwhile, Router B is only two
hops removed from Network X, and this is reflected in its routing table. Router B
using a distance vector
protocol sends the basic contents of its routing table to Router A. Router A sees
that Network X is only
two hops away from Router B even with the extra hop to get
from Router A to Router B. This means that Network X is
only three hops away from Router A if it forwards data to
Router B instead of Router C. Armed with this new information, Router A
updates its routing table to reflect this. In order to reach Network X
in the fastest way, it should forward traffic through
its own interface 1 to Router B. Now distance vector protocols are pretty
simple, but they don't allow for a router to have much information about
the state of the world outside of their own direct neighbors. Because of this, a
router might be slow to react to
a change in the network far away from it. This is why link state protocols
were eventually invented. Routers using a link state protocol
taking more sophisticated approach to determining the best path to a network. Link
state protocols get their name
because each router advertises the state of the link of each of its interfaces.
These interfaces could be
connected to other routers, or they could be direct
connections to networks. The information about each router is
propagated to every other router on the autonomous system. This means that every
router on
the system knows every detail about every other router in the system. Each router
then uses this much
larger set of information and runs complicated algorithms against it to determine
what the best path to
any destination network might be. Link state protocols require both more
memory in order to hold all of this data and also much more processing power. This
is because it has to run
algorithms against this data in order to determine the quickest path
to update the routing tables. As computer hardware has become more
powerful and cheaper over the years, link state protocols have mostly made
distance vector protocols outdated. Up next, we'll talk about
exterior gateway protocols. See you there.