Router and IP Addresses - Assignment Example

(Ramasamy 2007). An interface is a physical connector on the router (usually connected to multiple networks) used for receiving and forwarding packets (Ramasamy 2007). Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, and Token Ring to Serial and ISDN ports are some examples of interfaces in a router. Each interface has its own IP address different from the other interfaces in the same router. Summation of the number of all the IP addresses of the interfaces connected to the router gives the number of IP addresses a router has.

Link-state and distance-vector routing algorithms Routing algorithms, also known as routing protocols are formulas used by routers in order to determine the best and appropriate path onto which packet are to be forwarded. Besides determining the appropriate path, routing protocols also specifies how changes in the network are reported by the router to other routers in the network in addition to information sharing among the routers. Generally routing protocols are used to dynamically communicate information about all the network paths travelled in order to reach a destination.

It then uses the information to select the best path to reach a destination in the network. . It requires minimal configuration and low memory overhead. On the other hand, the link state algorithm determines best routing path by calculating the state of each link in a path and selects the path that has the lowest total metric to reach destination. It requires a higher memory footprint. Link state algorithm knows whether a link is up or down, besides the speed of the link. This enables it to accurately calculate the cost to reach a specified destination within a network.

It uses speed of the links in the path as the first priority over distance as compared to distance vector algorithm. Link state algorithm would choose to travel a path with more hops but of high speed than a few hops of low speed in order to reach its destination over a network unlike the distance vector algorithm which chooses the shortest possible distance to reach a destination irrespective of the speed of the links in the paths chosen. For this reason, a link state routing algorithm is much faster than the distance vector algorithm if all the links in the network have the same speed.

Distance vector algorithm would be preferable in a case where the links in the network has different speed since it employs a more direct route with fewer hops unlike the link state algorithm. Ping Command Type in the command prompt window “ping www.google.com” My IP address 192.168.0.103 Google IP address 74.125.236.178 Approximate round trip time in milliseconds Minimum=446ms Maximum=664 ms Average=536ms Trace route (tracert) Command The average round trip delay= 461.0 ms. Maximum=429 ms.

Minimum=418ms .It is different from that of ping (536ms) Hops=22, Routers= 22-2(source