RIP protocol

The Routing Information Protocol (RIP)  is one of a family of IP Routing protocols and is an Interior Gateway Protocol (IGP) designed to distribute routing information within an Autonomous System (AS).

Routing Information Protocol (RIP) is a simple vector routing protocol with many existing implementations in the field. In a vector routing protocol, the routers exchange network reachability information with their nearest neighbors. In other words, the routers communicate to each other the sets of destinations ("address prefixes") that they can reach and the next-hop address to which data should be sent in order to reach those destinations. This contrasts with link-state IGPs; vectoring protocols exchange routes with one another, whereas link-state routers exchange topology information, and calculate their own routes locally.

A vector routing protocol floods reachability information throughout all routers participating in the protocol, so that every router has a routing table containing the complete set of destinations known to the participating routers.