Performance analysis and evaluation of distance vector and link state routing protocols over a large area networks

Routing protocols are extremely important incredibly significant in data communication and computer networks. The high performance, reliability, stability, and security of the networks depend primarily on choosing the best type of dynamic routing protocol. In this paper, we evaluate and investigate the network performance for routing information protocol (RIP), enhanced interior gateway routing protocol (EIGRP), open shortest path first (OSPF), and intermediate system-to-intermediate system (IS-IS) routing protocols with three different scenarios of routes failure using the optimized network engineering tools (OPNET) simulator to determine which of the protocols is the most appropriate and effective in achieving high network performance. The results show that for large area networks, the EIGRP routing protocol gives the best network performance when all network routers are working with no failing, but when some network routers were failing to work and path failure is happening, the IS-IS link-state routing protocol works efficiently and gives the best performance. The obtained results for IS-IS protocol when failing seven routers is as: the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) page response time is (247.8 msec), voice delay variation is (4.19 µsec) , video delay variation is (8.83 µsec) and ping request and response time is (115 msec).