Routing Protocols; RIP & OSPF Simulation using

Riverbed Modeler (OPNET)

Add .gdb .txt file for RIP lab

Amit Kustagi
EE 450
Session 3
Abstract:
RIP Lab:
Routers when receive packets look at the destination address and decide on appropriate port it has to forward the packet
to. There are many metrics which are considered while this event happens. The first thing is the routing table which
decides the suitable path which leads to the destination which is then updated accordingly in the forwarding table which
forwards packets to appropriate output interface. There are many protocols which provide parameters and evaluations
to find the best path and create there routing table. One of the protocols are, Routing Information Protocol (RIP). RIP
protocol is based on distance vector updates and is has a metric of hop count. The maximum hop count is limited to 15 in
RIP. In this lab we will use RIP protocol and create few networks and see how the forwarding tables are updated, the traffic
sent because of these information exchange and analyze what happens when there is a link failure and how packets are
routed when this happens and how updates are exchanged, their frequencies of updates and also see how recover changes
the network.

OSPF lab:
Routing Information Protocol (RIP)

Figure 1: No_Failure RIP

The figure one shows the simulation model for NO_Failure scenario configured as per the requirements.

Figure2: Failure RIP

Figure 2 shows the simulation model for Failure scenario where link between Router 1 and Router 2 fails after 200
seconds.

Figure 3: Shows Total Number of Table Updates

As we can see from figure 3, the bar graph indicates total number of RIP updates sent by the routers. The top bar graph
shows the updates for Failure scenario and we can see that as per our configuration the link between router1 and router2
fails after 200 seconds and all the routers start sharing this information with other routers. This can be seen from the
graph at time t= 200sec, we see a raise or updates being sent. The bottom graph shows the updates for NO_failure scenario
and we can see updates only at the start of the simulation. This is the same for even failure scenario. The RIP protocol is
being set up by the routers in this start phase in both the scenarios.

Figure 4: The IP addresses between routers

We can see from figure 4, the IP addresses of the routers in the network. This is automatically assigned. We can see the
router 1 at the interface with router 3 has IP address 192.0.2.1 and with interface with router 2 the IP 192.0.3.1.

Figure 5: The network addresses between all the interfaces

Figure 5 shows the network addresses between all the interfaces. The captured gdb file is attached at the end of this lab
for reference. You can see that the naming convention is a bit different, I choose to name connect router 4 with net30
and net 31 network of hosts and Router 3 with Net 40 and Net41 network of hosts.

1. Obtain and analyze the graphs that compare the sent RIP traffic for both scenarios. Make sure to change the draw
style for the graphs to Bar Chart.
 Figure 6: RIP Traffic Sent
As we can see from the figure 6 which shows the RIP traffic sent for both the scenarios. We can see that the RIP
protocol sends updates every 30 seconds which can be seen from the graphs the bar every 30 seconds. We can
also see that for Failure Scenario that there is RIP updates being sent at 3 min 20 seconds as there is a link failure
between router 1 and router 2.

2. Describe and explain the effect of the failure of the link connecting Router1 to Router2 on the routing tables

As we can see from figure 7 and 8 in the next page. We can see the entries in the failure table get updated at time
t= 222.472 seconds because of the link failure between router 1 and router 2. So all the packets destined to router
2 now are forwarded to router 3 and appropriate next hop address, hop count, outgoing interface are updated.
We can see that from the NO_Failure scenario the forwarding table was updated at time t = 5.850 seconds and it
never changed because no link failure occurred at all. Insertion time shows at what time the entries where inserted
in the forwarding table.
 Figure 7: Forwarding Table Failure Scenario

Figure 8: Forwarding Table NO_Failure Scenario

 3. Create another scenario as a duplicate of the Failure scenario. Name the new scenario Q3_Recover. In this new
scenario have the link connecting Router1 to Router2 recover after 400 seconds. Generate and analyze the graph
that shows the effect of this recovery on the Total Number of Updates in the routing table of Router1. Check the
contents of Router1‘s routing table. Compare this table with the corresponding routing tables generated in the
NO_Failure and Failure scenarios.

Figure 9: Total No.of Updates at Router1

We can see from figure 9 the bottom bar graph shows the total no.of updated sent for the newly created scenario which
has a link failure between router 1 and router 2 at time t = 200 seconds and the link recovers at time t= 400 seconds.
Therefore, we can see that there are RIP updates being sent at time t = 400 seconds after recovery which we did not see
in the failure scenario which is represented in the top bar graph, as the link never recovers.

We can see from figure 10, 7 and 8. The forwarding table for all the scenarios. We can see that the forwarding table gets
updated after recover when new updates are sent at time t = 425.850 seconds. This is because the links fails at time t =
200 seconds and we saw the updates which remained the same in Failure scenario in figure 7. The figure 8 showed the
updates initially which are never changed because of no changes in the network and finally figure 10 shows the updated
tables after recovery.
 Figure 10: Forwarding Table for Failure and Recovery Scenario

Conclusion: In this lab we first performed a scenario where there were no link failure and used RIP protocol to see how
updates are performed, observed the traffic sent due to the RIP protocol. We also saw how automatically the IP addresses
are assigned and saw the IP addresses of routers and networks. We further created a link failure to observe how network
behaves and updates its table and saw the table and compared it with the no failure one. We saw how updates are sent
when there is a failure in the network and saw the bar graph which shows the total no.of updates. We also saw the
forwarding table and its entries like next hop address, hop count, next hop node, outgoing interface. Then we proceeded
to create another scenario where the network recovers from the failure and observed how the forwarding table changes
with this and plotted the graphs and analyzed all the three scenarios to understand how RIP works.
Open Shortest Path First (OSPF)

Figure 11: Simulation Model for all the scenarios of OSPF

1. Explain why the Areas and Balanced scenarios result in different routes than those observed in the No_Areas
scenario, for the same pair of routers.

Figure 12: Path from Router A-C, No areas Scenario

Figure 13: Path from Router B-H, No areas Scenario

Figure 14: Path from Router A-C, areas Scenario

Figure 15: Path from Router B-H, areas Scenario

 Figure 16: Path from Router A-C, Balanced Scenario

Figure 17: Path from Router A-C, Balanced Scenario

We can see from figure 12-17 the routes for router A-C and B-H for scenarios No_Areas, Areas and Balanced respectively.
For the No_Areas scenario (figure 12) we can see that the path from Router A-C is A-D-E-C, this is because there are no
areas created in OSPF and the cost for this path is 5 + 5 + 5 which is 15 and is lesser than the direct link cost which is 20.
Thus OSPF choses A-D-E-C path. This is not the case with Areas Scenario (figure 14) where there are 3 areas created, the
center area which is Router D and Router E with all the connected links to it form the backbone and Router A, B, C form
area 0.0.0.1 and Router F, G, H form area 0.0.0.2. Because of this area creation, the OSPF chooses path A-C the direct link
instead of A-D-E-C because it involves different areas. If a destination can be reached using only area routers then OSPF
commands to use that path. Thus even though the cost is 20, the Area scenario chooses this path.
For Balanced scenario 16, the path is again A-D-E-C as there are no areas created and there is only one path which has the
lowest cost and OSPF chooses that path.
Similarly for Router B-H, NO_Areas choose B-C-E-G-H and Areas choose B-A-D-F-H which is also the same cost as No_Areas
as Router A is the backbone router, and the balanced has two paths B-C-E-G-H and B-A-D-F-H because both the costs are
the same and they can balance the load depending on the traffic and split them between these 2 paths.
2. Using the simulation log, examine the generated routing table in Router A for each of the three scenarios. Explain
the values assigned to the Metric column of each route.

3. Modeler allows you to examine the link-state database that is used by each router to build the directed graph of
the network. Examine this database for RouterA in the No_Areas scenario. Show how RouterA utilizes this
database to create a map for the topology of the network and draw this map

4. Create another scenario as a duplicate of the No_Areas scenario. Name the new scenario Q4_No_Areas_Failure.
In this new scenario simulate a failure of the link connecting RouterD and RotuerE. Have this failure start after
100 seconds. Rerun the simulation. Show how that link failure affects the content of the link- state database and
routing table of RouterA.

5. For both No_Areas and Q4_No_Areas_Failure scenario, collect the Traffic Sent (bits/sec) statistic (one of the
Global Statistics under OSPF). Rerun the simulation for those two scenarios and obtain the graph that compares
the OSPF’s Traffic Sent (bits/sec) in both scenarios. Comment on the obtained graph.
We can see from the figure the traffic sent by OSPF in NO_Areas and NO_Areas_Failure scenario. The traffic
sent by both the scenarios are the same at the start with many updates being sent to set up the routing
information. While in the failure scenario we can see that at time t = 100sec there is a spike in traffic sent
because of the link failure between router D-E. We can also see regular updates being sent which is a part of
OSPF working.