Distance Vector Routing Protocol

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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.

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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.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology expert

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of ​​a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.