RFC 1387

RIP Version 2 Protocol Analysis 🦋

okay bestie, so this is RFC 1387 💖 It's from the Network Working Group, written by G. Malkin at Xylogics, Inc. (that's Gary Scott Malkin 🫶), dated January 1993. It's an informational memo, not a standard. The header doesn't list anything it obsoletes or updates, but Section 1 says it suggests an update to RIP (RFC 1058) 👑

---

Status of this Memo ✨

this memo gives information to the Internet community. it does not specify an Internet standard. distribution of this memo is unlimited 🌸

Abstract 🎀

as Routing Protocol Criteria (RFC 1264) requires, this report covers the key features of the RIP-2 protocol and what implementers have actually seen so far 🔥

Acknowledgements 🫶

RIP-2 owes a lot to everyone in the RIP-2 Working Group of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) 💜 A special thank-you goes to Fred Baker for his help on the MIB, and to Jeffrey Honig for the implementation experience 🙌

1. Protocol Documents 📚

the RIP-2 protocol description lives in RFC 1388 [1]. this memo suggests an update to the "Routing Information Protocol" (RFC 1058) [3]. the RIP-2 MIB description lives in RFC 1389 [2] 💅

2. Key Features ✨

RIP-2 runs the same basic algorithms as RIP-1, but it adds some new stuff: routing domains, external route tags, subnet masks, next hop addresses, and authentication. it's giving upgrade 🦋

2.1 Routing Domains

routing domains let multiple RIP "clouds" exist over the same physical network. several working group members asked for this, and it's honestly so smart. you can build simple policies by grouping routers into domains that share routing information 🧚

2.2 External Route Tags

the route tag field can carry information picked up from an EGP. what goes in that field is outside the scope of this protocol. but it may be used, for example, to carry an EGP AS number 🍓

2.3 Subnet Masks

including subnet masks was the original reason RIP got opened up for improvement, periodt 💖 they make RIP way more useful in lots of environments and let you use variable subnet masks on the network. subnet masks are also needed for "classless" addressing, the way the CIDR work proposes 🌈

2.4 Next Hop Addresses

next hop addresses let you optimize routes when a network runs multiple routing protocols 💅 say RIP-2 is running alongside another IGP and one router runs both. that router can tell the other RIP-2 routers that a better next hop than itself exists for a given destination. main character router energy 👑

2.5 Authentication

the big glow-up over RIP-1 is the authentication mechanism 🔐 it's basically the same extensible mechanism OSPF has. right now only a plain-text password is defined for authentication. but fancier authentication schemes can be dropped in easily once they're defined 💜

2.6 Multicasting

RIP-2 packets may be multicast instead of broadcast 🦋 using an IP multicast address takes load off hosts that don't support routing protocols. it also lets RIP-2 routers share information that RIP-1 routers can't hear. this is lowkey important because a RIP-1 router may misread route information, since it can't apply the supplied subnet mask 💀

3. RIP-2 MIB 🧁

the RIP-2 MIB lets you monitor and control how RIP runs inside the router. on top of global and per-interface counters and controls, there are per-peer counters that show the status of RIP-2 "neighbors" 👀

4. Implementations 🌸

right now there's one nearly complete RIP-2 implementation 🔥 a "gated" implementation with RIP-2 is available, written by Jeffrey Honig at Cornell University. you can grab it by anonymous FTP from gated.cornell.edu as pub/gated/gated-alpha.tar.Z. it does multicasting, subnet masks, limited authentication, next-hop, and limited routing domain support. there's also a RIP-2 version of ripquery 💖

the "gated" implementation doesn't support full subsumption rules, full authentication, full routing domains, or the MIB yet 🙈 it's been tested against itself and various RIP-1 implementations.

a second, complete implementation is being developed by a vendor whose identity cannot be disclosed at this time 🤐

5. References 📚

• [1] Malkin, G., "RIP Version 2 - Carrying Additional Information", RFC 1388, Xylogics, Inc., January 1993.
• [2] Malkin, G., and F. Baker, "RIP Version 2 MIB Extension", RFC 1389, Xylogics, Inc., Advanced Computer Communications, January 1993.
• [3] Hedrick, C., "Routing Information Protocol", RFC 1058, Rutgers University, June 1988.

6. Security Considerations 🚨

security issues are discussed in section 2.5. honestly bestie, this is the big one 😭 authentication is where RIP-2 gets its security story, and it's currently just plain-text passwords 💀 so read that section like it's your favorite episode 🔐

7. Author's Address 🦋

Gary Scott Malkin, Xylogics, Inc., 53 Third Avenue, Burlington, MA 01803.

Phone: (617) 272-8140

EMail: gmalkin@Xylogics.COM