Simulation-Based Comparative Study of EIGRP and OSPF for Real-Time Applications

Sammanfattning: Routing protocol is taking a vital role in the modern communication networks. The performance of each routing protocol is different from each other. In the context of routing protocol performance, each of them has different architecture, adaptability, route processing delays and convergence capabilities. Among different routing protocols, Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP) and Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) have been considered as the pre-eminent routing protocols for the real-time application. EIGRP and OSPF are dynamic routing protocols used in practical networks to disseminate network topology towards the adjacent routers. There are various numbers of static and dynamic routing protocols available but it is very important to select a right protocol among them. This selection depends on several parameters such as network convergence time, network scalability and bandwidth requirements. Our thesis paper reports a simulation based comparative performance analysis between EIGRP and OSPF for real time applications such as video streaming and voice conferencing by using OPNET. In order to evaluate the performance of EIGRP and OSPF, we designed two network models that are configured with EIGRP and OSPF, respectively. The evaluation of the routing protocols is performed based on quantitative metrics such as convergence time, packet delay variation, end-to-end delay, throughput and packet loss through the simulated network models. The evaluation results show that EIGRP routing protocol provides a better performance than OSPF routing protocol for real time applications.