What Does Distance Vector Routing Protocol Mean?
Distance Vector Routing Protocol (DVRP) is one of two major routing protocols for communications methods that use data packets sent over Internet Protocol (IP). DVRP requires routing hardware to report the distances of various nodes within a network or IP topology in order to determine the best and most efficient routes for data packets.
Techopedia Explains Distance Vector Routing Protocol
In contrast to DVRP and the other predominant type of routing protocol, which is called Link State Routing Protocol, the DVRP method tends to contemplate only two factors: distance and vector. Distance is commonly defined as the number of steps, or hosts, a message must go through to get to its destination. The vector describes the trajectory of the message over a given set of network nodes. Link state protocols use a slightly more sophisticated method to look at how fast or efficient a given point in the vector is in order to run messages through faster network points instead of slower ones.
DVRP and link state protocols are useful in Voice over IP and other types of communications that use routed data packets. As the IP infrastructure becomes more valuable to telecom and global markets in general, it’s likely that future advances will continue to boost the capacity of IP traffic with improved methods and hardware.