Cisco IP Routing Handbook

Routers are to the present what railroads were to the 1880s: they carry the goods and services that make the world's economy grow; they transport packets from origin to destination as efficiently as possible, even via an Internet that's changing constantly. On the other hand, routers aren't magic: they behave according to principles and algorithms. Engineers who understand routing protocols--the rules that control a router's choice of routes--can make routers do their bidding. Cisco IP Routing Handbookexplains how the most popular routing protocols work, and how the most popular line of routers implements them. This book makes a handy guide for people who need to configure routing protocols on Cisco routers, as well as an accurate and deep (if sometimes dense) introduction to Layer 3 protocols for internetworking.

The book approaches the more complicated and capable routing protocols first by explaining Routing Information Protocol (RIP) and the fundamental principles that it incorporates in a way that's understood relatively easily. The explanations require readers to pay close attention to text that's interspersed with routing tables and input/output sequences from Cisco's Internetworking Operating System (IOS). Given the proper attention, this text does a fine job of explaining how Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (IGRP), Enhanced IGRP (EIGRP), and Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) routing work, along with static routing and other simpler concepts. --David Wall

Topics covered: Routing protocols, as implemented by Cisco Systems routers and configured on the Cisco Internetworking Operating System (IOS). Routing Information Protocol (RIP), Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (IGRP), Enhanced IGRP (EIGRP), Open Shortest Path First (OSPF), Integrated System to Integrated System (IS-IS), and Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) version 4 all are covered.