Interior Gateway Routing Protocol

Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (IGRP) is a distance vector interior routing protocol (IGP) invented by Cisco. It is used by routers to exchange routing data within an autonomous system.

IGRP is a proprietary protocol. IGRP was created in part to overcome the limitations of RIP (maximum hop count of only 15, and a single routing metric) when used within large networks. IGRP supports multiple metrics for each route, including bandwidth, delay, load, MTU, and reliability; to compare two routes these metrics are combined together into a single metric, using a formula which can be adjusted through the use of pre-set constants. The maximum hop count of IGRP-routed packets is 255 (default 100), and routing updates are broadcast every 90 seconds (by default).

IGRP is considered a classful routing protocol. Because the protocol has no field for a subnet mask, the router assumes that all subnetwork addresses within the same Class A, Class B, or Class C network have the same subnet mask as the subnet mask configured for the interfaces in question. This contrasts with classless routing protocols that can use variable length subnet masks. Classful protocols have become less popular as they are wasteful of IP address space.

Internet protocols
Application layer
  • DHCP
  • DHCPv6
  • DNS
  • FTP
  • HTTP
  • IMAP
  • IRC
  • LDAP
  • MGCP
  • NNTP
  • NTP
  • POP
  • RPC
  • RTP
  • RTSP
  • SIP
  • SMTP
  • SNMP
  • SOCKS
  • SSH
  • Telnet
  • TLS/SSL
  • XMPP
  • (more)
Transport layer
  • TCP
  • UDP
  • DCCP
  • SCTP
  • RSVP
  • (more)
Routing protocols *
  • BGP
  • OSPF
  • RIP
  • (more)
Internet layer
  • IP
    • IPv4
    • IPv6
  • ICMP
  • ICMPv6
  • ECN
  • IGMP
  • IPsec
  • (more)
Link layer
  • ARP/InARP
  • NDP
  • Tunnels
    • L2TP
  • PPP
  • Media access control
    • Ethernet
    • DSL
    • ISDN
    • FDDI
  • (more)
* Not a layer. A routing protocol belongs either to application or network layer.

Read more about Interior Gateway Routing Protocol:  Advancement

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