Comparative performance evaluation of open shortest path first, OSPF and routing information protocol, RIP in network link failure and recovery cases

The effect of Network link failure is undesirable which necessitated redundant links for reliability. This implies that operations are switched between links in case of failure. In the modern world where speed matters, it is important to investigate how quickly different routing protocols, in this case, Open Shortest Path First, OSPF and Routing Information Protocol, RIP recovers in case of link failure in a mesh topology. The research was simulated using OPNET. It was modelled after the University of Salford main campus, using three of its building, Newton, Peel and CW library. There were several links in between the buildings. There network was configured for the two routing protocols in different scenarios to test for their performance in case of single and multiple link(s) failure and recovery. It was observed that RIP converges faster (11.21s) than OSPF (53.06s) at the initial stage of the network in all cases. However, OSPF converges faster (Average of 5s - link failure, Average of 15s - Link recovery) than RIP (Average of 18.57s-link failure, Average of 18.28s - link recovery) in both single and multiple link(s) failure/recovery scenarios. Therefore, based on the performance comparison, OSPF should be used in a network prone to frequent link failure as it performs better in this situation. However, RIP would be preferred if the network is not prone to frequent network failure.