Difference between Routed and Routing Protocols

Routed Protocols vs. Routing Protocols
In this article we will cover the difference between Routed Protocols and Routing Protocols. This is one of the thing that can be asked of you if you are attending a job interview or if you are going to CCNA exam so, you must know the difference between a “routed” protocol and a “routing protocol” as one of the key concepts in the Routing world and networking world.

A routed protocol is a protocol by which data can be routed. Routed protocol are IP, AppleTalk, and IPX. In this kind of protocols we require an addressing scheme and subneting. Addressing scheme will be used to determine the network to which a host belongs and to identifying that host on that particular network. All hosts on an internetwork are using the services of a routed protocol. That means routers, servers, but workstations to. The only two routed protocols that are in use today are IP and IPX but IPX is dropped from Cisco in exams and is not in use much these days. If you are studying routed protocols the best advice is to focus on IP routed protocol.

A routing protocol is different and is only used between routers. It makes possible for routers to build and maintain routing tables. There are three classes of routing protocols:

• distance vector
• link state
• hybrid

OSPF is one of two link state protocols, the other one is IS-IS. EIGRP is the only hybrid protocol but in normal literature you will see that EIGRP is distance vector routing protocol. If you ask Cisco, they are speaking about EIGRP as Enhanced Distance vector routing protocol. Every other routing protocol is also from distance vector category. There are RIP, RIPv2 and BGP. Every protocol has a different administrative distance, RIP is 120, IGRP is 100, EIGRP 90, OSPF 110 and that static routes normally have a lower administrative distance than every other route, if you use the defaults a static router is 1 and a directly connected router is 0.