5.2 RIP Configuration

Command: router rip

The router rip command is necessary to enable RIP. To disable RIP, use the no router rip command. RIP must be enabled before carrying out any of the RIP commands.

Command: no router rip

Disable RIP.

RIP Command: network network

RIP Command: no network network

Set the RIP enable interface by network. The interfaces which have addresses matching with network are enabled.

This group of commands either enables or disables RIP interfaces between certain numbers of a specified network address. For example, if the network for 10.0.0.0/24 is RIP enabled, this would result in all the addresses from 10.0.0.0 to 10.0.0.255 being enabled for RIP. The no network command will disable RIP for the specified network.

RIP Command: network ifname

RIP Command: no network ifname

Set a RIP enabled interface by ifname. Both the sending and receiving of RIP packets will be enabled on the port specified in the network ifname command. The no network ifname command will disable RIP on the specified interface.

RIP Command: neighbor a.b.c.d

RIP Command: no neighbor a.b.c.d

Specify RIP neighbor. When a neighbor doesn’t understand multicast, this command is used to specify neighbors. In some cases, not all routers will be able to understand multicasting, where packets are sent to a network or a group of addresses. In a situation where a neighbor cannot process multicast packets, it is necessary to establish a direct link between routers. The neighbor command allows the network administrator to specify a router as a RIP neighbor. The no neighbor a.b.c.d command will disable the RIP neighbor.

Below is very simple RIP configuration. Interface eth0 and interface which address match to 10.0.0.0/8 are RIP enabled.

!
router rip
 network 10.0.0.0/8
 network eth0
!

Passive interface

RIP command: passive-interface (IFNAME|default)

RIP command: no passive-interface IFNAME

This command sets the specified interface to passive mode. On passive mode interface, all receiving packets are processed as normal and ripd does not send either multicast or unicast RIP packets except to RIP neighbors specified with neighbor command. The interface may be specified as default to make ripd default to passive on all interfaces.

The default is to be passive on all interfaces.

RIP split-horizon

Interface command: ip split-horizon

Interface command: no ip split-horizon

Control split-horizon on the interface. Default is ip split-horizon. If you don’t perform split-horizon on the interface, please specify no ip split-horizon.