Effect of data packet size on the performance of RIP and OSPF routing protocols in hybrid networks

Purpose The purpose of this study is to calculate the effect of different packet sizes 256, 512, 1,024 and 2,048 bytes on a large-scale hybrid network and analysis and identifies which routing protocol is best for application throughput, application delay and network link parameters for different packet sizes. As the routing protocol is used to select the optimal path to transfer data packets from source to destination. It is always important to consider the performance of the routing protocol before the final network configuration. From the literature, it has been observed that RIP (Routing Information Protocol) and OSPF (Open Shortest Path First) are the most popular routing protocols, and it has always been a challenge to select between these routing protocols, especially for hybrid networks. The efficiency of routing protocol mainly depends on resulting throughput and delay. Also, it has been observed that data packet size also plays an essential role in determining the efficiency of routing protocol. Design/methodology/approach To analyse the effect of different packet sizes using two routing protocols, routing information protocol (RIP) and open shortest path first (OSPF) on the hybrid network, require detailed planning. Designing the network for simulate and then finally analysing the results requires proper study. Each stage needs to be understood well for work accomplishment. Thus, the network’s simulation and evaluation require implementing the proposed work step by step, saving time and cost. Here, the proposed work methodology is defined in six steps or stages. Findings The simulation results show that both routing protocols – RIP and OSPF are equally good in terms of network throughput for all different packet sizes. However, OSPF performs better in terms of network delay than RIP routing protocol in different packet size scenarios. Research limitations/implications In this paper, a fixed network of 125 objects and only RIP and OSPF routing protocol have been used for analysis. Therefore, in the future, a comparison of different network sizes can be considered by increasing or decreasing the number of objects in the proposed network. Furthermore, the other routing protocols can be used for performance evaluation on the same proposed network. Originality/value The analysis can be conducted by simulation of the network, enabling us to develop a network environment without restricting the selection of parameters as it minimizes cost, network deployment overhead, human resources, etc. The results are analysed, calculated and compared for each packet size on different routing protocol networks individually and the conclusion is made.