Simulation-Based Routing protocol Performance Analysis - A Case Study

In this paper we evaluate the Enhanced Interior Gate-way Routing Protocol (EIGRP) via packet simulations. EIGRP, an intra-domain routing protocol developed by Cisco, is mainly based on the Diusing Update Al-gorithm (DUAL) which computes shortest paths dis-tributedly without creating routing-table loops or in-curring counting-to-innity problem. Previous studies showed EIGRP's ability to adapt quickly to routing changes in medium-scale networks. In our research, we developed a detailed simulation model of EIGRP (pub-licly available), and we used it to evaluate EIGRP per-formance under a very dynamic network. Our results showed that EIGRP converges faster than a single TCP timeout in most cases. The simulated network was a composite of wired and wireless hosts, and the results hold for both types of media. In addition, the study showed a feasible approach for seamless mobility and continuous connectivity for users of mobile wireless de-vices as they move within an Autonomous System (AS).