RIP prevents routing loops by implementing a limit on the number of hops allowed in a path from source to destination.
As networks grew in size, however, it became evident there could be a massive traffic burst every 30 seconds, even if the routers had been initialized at random times.
In most networking environments, RIP is not the preferred choice of routing protocol, as its time to converge and scalability are poor compared to EIGRP, OSPF, or IS-IS.
The predecessor of RIP was the Gateway Information Protocol (GWINFO) which was developed by Xerox in the mid-1970s to route its experimental network.
The 1982 Berkeley Software Distribution of the UNIX operating system implemented RIP in the routed daemon.
The 4.2BSD release proved popular and became the basis for subsequent UNIX versions, which implemented RIP in the routed or gated daemon.
Ultimately, RIP had been extensively deployed[2] before the standard, written by Charles Hedrick, was passed as RIPv1 in 1988.
[3] The routing metric used by RIP counts the number of routers that need to be passed to reach a destination IP network.
[5] It was thought, as a result of random initialization, the routing updates would spread out in time, but this was not true in practice.
[9] It included the ability to carry subnet information, thus supporting Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR).
RIPv2 has facilities to fully interoperate with the earlier specification if all Must Be Zero protocol fields in the RIPv1 messages are properly specified.
It was replaced by the Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP) which is a completely new design.