The TCP/IP Guide  9  TCP/IP Lower-Layer (Interface, Internet and Transport) Protocols (OSI Layers 2, 3 and 4)       9  TCP/IP Internet Layer (OSI Network Layer) Protocols            9  TCP/IP Routing Protocols (Gateway Protocols)                 9  TCP/IP Interior Routing Protocols (RIP, OSPF, GGP, HELLO, IGRP, EIGRP)                      9  TCP/IP Routing Information Protocol (RIP, RIP-2 and RIPng)                           9  RIP Version-Specific Message Formats and Features

RIP Version 2 (RIP-2) Message Format and Features 1 2 3 Open Shortest Path First (OSPF)

The future of TCP/IP is the new Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6), which makes some very important changes to IP, especially with regard to addressing. Since IPv6 addresses are different than IPv4 addresses, everything that works with IP addresses must change to function under IPv6. This includes routing protocols, which exchange addressing information.

To ensure a future for the Routing Information Protocol, a new IPv6-compatible version had to be developed. This new version was published in 1997 in RFC 2080, RIPng for IPv6, where the ng stands for next generation (IPv6 is also sometimes called “IP next generation”).

RIPng, which is also occasionally seen as RIPv6 for obvious reasons, was designed to be as similar as possible to the current version of RIP for IPv4, which is RIP Version 2 (RIP-2). In fact, RFC 2080 describes RIPng as “the minimum change” possible to RIP to allow it to work on IPv6. Despite this effort, it was not possible to define RIPng as just a new version of the older RIP protocol, like RIP-2 was. RIPng is a new protocol, which was necessary because of the significance of the changes between IPv4 and IPv6—especially the change from 32-bit to 128-bit addresses in IPv6, which necessitated a new message format.

RIP Version 2 (RIP-2) Message Format and Features 1 2 3 Open Shortest Path First (OSPF)