Talk:Routing

EIGRP is not a link-state protocol
I'm getting really tired of seeing the Cisco marketing balderdash about EIGRP being a "hybrid" of link-state routing and destination-vector routing spammed across Wikipedia, and even more tired of seeing repeatedly inserted after I keep removing it. I'm therefore going to spam this across every Talk: page where I see this claim, and a shorter note to the effect that EIGRP has no link-state stuff at all, in the articles.

Nothing could be further from the truth than the claim that EIGRP has any link-state aspects.

EIGRP is simply a multi-metric, event-driven, destination-vector routing protocol. Neither the "multi-metric" part nor the "event-driven" part has anything to do with link-state.

Link-state protocols have the following characteristics:


 * they distribute topology maps, not routing tables
 * nodes run a shortest-path algorithm such as Dijkstra over the map to produce the routing table

EIGRP does neither.

Clearly, one can design link-state protocols to be either event-driven, or not; all done to date (from the original "new" ARPANet routing algorithm) have been so, but that's purely a design decision. Event-driven or not-event-drive is a completely separate design axis.

Now stop adding this bogus nonsense! Noel (talk) 04:57, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

"Hybrid" protocols
I removed the following text from the page:


 * There is also a third method called hybrid: Hybrid protocols are a combination of link-state and distance-vector routing protocols. Hybrid protocols have rapid convergence (like link-state protocols) but use much less memory and processor power than link-state protocols. Hybrid protocols use distance-vectors for more accurate metrics and to determine the best path to destination.

because most of it's untrue. The only true MD/DV hybrid (it wasn't even link-state, but rather Map-Distribution, a larger class that includes link-state) ever even proposed (that I know of) was the "Unified" design of Rehkter and Estrin, circa 1988 or so (Deborah Estrin, Yakov Rekhter and Steve Hotz, "A Unified Approach to Inter-Domain Routing", RFC 1322) but it did not have the characteristics of "rapid convergence ... but use much less memory and processor power than link-state."

This whole "hybrid" think is Cisco marketing crap that most people seem to have swallowed hook, line and sinker - I assume because they don't really understand routing. Noel (talk) 05:22, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Comparison of Routing Algorithms - suggestion
Perhaps this info would be easier to read if placed in a table. Decisions are generally easier to make if the direct comparisons are clear. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.104.209.228 (talk • contribs)

subtractive routing
Subtractive routing is alluded to in a few Wikipedia articles, such as IEEE 1355 and Serial attached SCSI. What Wikipedia article would be appropriate for describing subtractive routing? --DavidCary (talk) 17:59, 7 January 2015 (UTC)


 * The IEEE 1355 use of subtractive path routing was not supported elsewhere so I removed that. The Serial Attached SCSI use of subtractive routing is described there well enough. ~Kvng (talk) 14:59, 7 May 2023 (UTC)