PUNE INSTITUTE OF COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY, PUNE

ACADEMIC YEAR: 2022-23

DEPARTMENT of COMPUTER ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT
CLASS: T.E. SEMESTER: I
SUBJECT: CNSL
ASSINGMENT NO. B2
TITLE Write a program to implement Link state / Distance vector routing protocol
to find suitable path for transmission
PROBLEM STATEMENT 1. Write a program to implement Link state routing protocol to find
/DEFINITION suitable path for transmission
2. Write a program to implement Distance vector state routing
protocol to find suitable path for transmission

OBJECTIVE Learn and understand behavior of link state routing

algorithm
Implementation of Link state strategy to find the
appropriate path from source to destination

OUTCOME Demonstrate the Study Link state and Distance vector method of routing

S/W PACKAGES AND PC with the configuration as Pentium IV 1.7 GHz. 128M.B
HARDWARE APPARATUS RAM, 40 G.B HDD, 15’’Color Monitor, Keyboard, Mouse.
USED Operating Systems (64-Bit)64-BIT Fedora 20 or latest 64-BIT
Update of Equivalent Open source OS Programming Tools
(64-Bit) GCC/G++

REFERENCES Mansfield K., Antonakos J., "An Introduction to Computer

Networking", Perason Education, 2002, ISBN 81 - 7808 - 828
–2

Fourauzan B., "Data Communications and Networking", 5 th Edition,

Tata McGraw- Hill, Publications, ISBN: 0 – 07 – 058408 – 7
STEPS
Refer to student activity flowchart

1. Date
INSTRUCTIONS FOR 2. Assignment no.
WRITING JOURNAL 3. Problem definition
4. Learning objective
5. Learning Outcome
6. Concepts related Theory
7. Algorithm
8. Test cases
10. Conclusion/Analysis

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Prerequisites: Network layer functions, Routing and forwarding

Concepts related Theory:

1. Distance vector and Link State Routing Protocol

Link-state routing protocols are one of the two main classes of routing protocols used in packet
switching networks for computer communications, the other being distance-vector routing
protocols. Examples of link-state routing protocols include Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) and
intermediate system to intermediate system (IS-IS).
The link-state protocol is performed by every switching node in the network (i.e., nodes that are
prepared to forward packets; in the Internet, these are called routers). The basic concept of link-
state routing is that every node constructs a map of the connectivity to the network, in the form
of a graph, showing which nodes are connected to which other nodes. Each node then
independently calculates the next best logical path from it to every possible destination in the
network. Each collection of best paths will then form each node's routing table.
2. Calculating the shortest paths
Each node independently runs an algorithm over the map to determine the shortest path from
itself to every other node in the network; generally some variant of Dijkstra's algorithmis used.
This is based around a link cost across each path which includes available bandwidth among
other things. A node maintains two data structures: a tree containing nodes which are "done", and
a list of candidates. The algorithm starts with both structures empty; it then adds to the first one
the node itself. The variant of a Greedy Algorithm then repetitively does the following:
All neighbour nodes which are directly connected to the node are just added to the tree
(exaccepting any nodes which are already in either the tree or the candidate list). The rest
areadded to the second (candidate) list.
Each node in the candidate list is compared to each of the nodes already in the tree. The
candidate node which is closest to any of the nodes already in the tree is itself moved into the
tree and attached to the appropriate neighbor node. When a node is moved from the candidate list
into the tree, it is removed from the candidate list and is not considered in subsequent iterations
of the algorithm.
The above two steps are repeated as long as there are any nodes left in the candidate list. (When
there are none, all the nodes in the network will have been added to the tree.) This procedure
ends with the tree containing all the nodes in the network, with the node on which the algorithm
is running as the root of the tree. The shortest path from that node to any other node is indicated
by the list of nodes one traverses to get from the root of the tree to the desired node in the tree.
3. Filling the routing table
With the shortest paths in hand, the next step is to fill in the routing table. For any given

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destination node, the best path for that destination is the node which is the first step from the root
node, down the branch in the shortest-path tree which leads toward the desired destination node.
To create the routing table, it is only necessary to walk the tree, remembering the identity of the
node at the head of each branch, and filling in the routing table entry for each node one comes
across with that identity.
Algorithm
Dijkstra’s algorithm is very similar to Prim’s algorithm for minimum spanning tree. Like Prim’s
MST, we generate a SPT (shortest path tree) with given source as root. We maintain two sets, one
set contains vertices included in shortest path tree, other set includes vertices not yet included in
shortest path tree. At every step of the algorithm, we find a vertex which is in the other set (set of
not yet included) and has minimum distance from source.
1) Create a set sptSet (shortest path tree set) that keeps track of vertices included in shortest path
tree, i.e., whose minimum distance from source is calculated and finalized. Initially, this set is
empty.
2) Assign a distance value to all vertices in the input graph. Initialize all distance values as
INFINITE. Assign distance value as 0 for the source vertex so that it is picked first.
3) While sptSet doesn’t include all vertices
a) Pick a vertex u which is not there in sptSetand has minimum distance value.
b) Include u to sptSet.
c) Update distance value of all adjacent vertices of u. To update the distance values, iterate
through all adjacent vertices. For every adjacent vertex v, if sum of distance value of u (from
source) and weight of edge u-v, is less than the distance value of v, then update the distance
value of v.

Distance Vector Routing (DVR) Protocol

A distance-vector routing (DVR) protocol requires that a router inform its neighbors of topology
changes periodically. Historically known as the old ARPANET routing algorithm (or known as

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Bellman-Ford algorithm).

Bellman Ford Basics – Each router maintains a Distance Vector table containing the distance
between itself and ALL possible destination nodes. Distances,based on a chosen metric, are
computed using information from the neighbors’ distance vectors.
Information kept by DV router -
Each router has an ID Associated with each link connected to a router, there is a link cost (static
or dynamic). Intermediate hops
Distance Vector Table Initialization -
Distance to itself = 0
Distance to ALL other routers = infinity number.
Distance Vector Algorithm –
A router transmits its distance vector to each of its neighbors in a routing packet.
Each router receives and saves the most recently received distance vector from each of its
neighbors.
A router recalculates its distance vector when:
It receives a distance vector from a neighbor containing different information than before.
It discovers that a link to a neighbor has gone down.
The DV calculation is based on minimizing the cost to each destination
Dx(y) = Estimate of least cost from x to y
C(x,v) = Node x knows cost to each neighbor v
Dx = [Dx(y): y ∈ N ] = Node x maintains distance vector
Node x also maintains its neighbors' distance vectors
– For each neighbor v, x maintains Dv = [Dv(y): y ∈ N ]
Note –From time-to-time, each node sends its own distance vector estimate to neighbors.
When a node x receives new DV estimate from any neighbor v, it saves v’s distance vector and it
updates its own DV using B-F equation:
Dx(y) = min { C(x,v) + Dv(y), Dx(y) } for each node y ∈ N
Example – Consider 3-routers X, Y and Z as shown in figure. Each router have their routing

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table. Every routing table will contain distance to the destination nodes.

Consider router X , X will share it routing table to neighbors and neighbors will share it
routing table to it to X and distance from node X to destination will be calculated using
bellmen- ford equation.
Dx(y) = min { C(x,v) + Dv(y)} for each node y ∈ N
As we can see that distance will be less going from X to Z when Y is intermediate node(hop)
so it will be update in routing table X.

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Similarly for Z also –

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Finally the routing table for all –

Advantages of Distance Vector routing –

 It is simpler to configure and maintain than link state routing.
Disadvantages of Distance Vector routing –
 It is slower to converge than link state.
 It is at risk from the count-to-infinity problem.

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  It creates more traffic than link state since a hop count change must be
propagated to all routers and processed on each router. Hop count updates
take place on a periodic basis, even if there are no changes in the network
topology, so bandwidth-wasting broadcasts still occur.
 For larger networks, distance vector routing results in larger routing tables
than link state since each router must know about all other routers. This can
also lead to congestion on WAN links.
Note – Distance Vector routing uses UDP(User datagram protocol) for transportation.

Review Questions:
1. What is routing?
2. What is distance vector and link state routing? Differentiate.
3. What is RIP?
4. What is OSPF?

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