What is a routing algorithm in network layer?

About Routing

- The process of path selection in the network along which the data and the network traffic could be send is termed as routing. 

- Routing is a common process carried out in a number of networks such as the transportation networks, telephone networks (in circuit switching), electronic data networks (for example, internet). 

- The main purpose of routing is to direct the packet forwarding from source to its destination via the intermediate nodes. 

- These nodes are nothing but hardware devices namely gateways, bridges, switches, firewalls, routers and so on. 

- A general purpose system which does not have any of these specialized routing components can also participate in routing but only to a limited extent.

But how to know where the packets have to be routed? 

- This information about the source and the destination address is found in a table called the routing table which is stored in the memory of the routers. 

- These tables store the records of routers to a number of destinations over the network. 

- Therefore, construction of the routing tables is also an important part of efficient routing process. 

- Routing algorithms are used to construct this table and for selecting the optimal path or route to a particular destination. 

- A majority of the routing algorithms are based on single path routing techniques while few others use multi-path routing techniques. 

- This allows for the use of other alternative paths if one is not available. 

- In some, the algorithm may discover equal or overlapping routes. 

- In such cases the following 3 basis are considered for deciding up on which route is to be used:

1. Administrative distance: This basis is valid when different routing protocols are being used. It prefers a lower distance.
2. Metric: This basis is valid when only one routing protocol is being used throughout the networks. It prefers a low cost route.
3. Prefix-length: This basis does not depends on whether the same protocol is being used or there are many different protocols involved. It prefers the longer subnet masks.

Types of Routing Algorithms

Distance Vector Algorithms: 

- In these algorithms, the basic algorithm used is the “Bellman – Ford algorithm”. 

- In this approach, a cost number is assigned to all the links that exist between the nodes of a network.

- The information is send by the links from point A to point B through the route that results in the lowest total cost.

- The total cost is the sum of the costs of all the individual links in the route. 

- The manner of operation of this algorithm is quite simple.

- It checks from its immediate neighboring nodes that can be reached with the minimum cost and proceeds.

Link-state Algorithms: 

- This algorithm works based up on the graphical map of the network which is supplied as input to it. 

- For producing this map, each of the nodes assembles the information regarding to which all nodes it can connect to in the network. 

- Then the router can itself determine which path has the lowest cost and proceed accordingly. 

- The path is selected using standard path selection algorithms such as the Dijkstra’s algorithm. 

- This algorithm results in a tree graph whose root is the current node. 

- This tree is then used for the construction of the routing tables.

Optimized link state Routing Algorithm: 

- This is the algorithm that has been optimized to be used in the mobile ad-hoc networks. 

- This algorithm is often abbreviated to OLSR (optimized link state routing). 

- This algorithm is proactive and makes used of topology control messages for discovering and disseminating the information of the link’s state via mobile ad-hoc network.