Which of the following is not a valid routing protocol?

The Outsider: Why RPC Isn’t a Routing Protocol

Networking’s intricate dance relies on a complex choreography of protocols. These protocols, often working in concert, ensure data packets reach their destination efficiently and reliably. Familiar names like RIP (Routing Information Protocol), OSPF (Open Shortest Path First), and BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) spring to mind – these are the workhorses of network routing, constantly calculating and recalculating optimal paths across vast networks. But amidst this bustling activity, a different kind of communication takes place: Remote Procedure Call (RPC). While often found in networked environments, RPC’s role is fundamentally distinct from that of a routing protocol. This article explores why RPC, despite its network dependency, doesn’t belong in the same category as RIP, OSPF, or BGP.

Routing protocols, at their core, are concerned with discovering and maintaining network topology. They build and disseminate routing tables, providing information about the best paths to reach different network segments or destinations. RIP, for example, uses a distance-vector algorithm to share routing information with neighboring routers, propagating updates throughout the network. OSPF employs a link-state algorithm, creating a comprehensive map of the network topology before calculating optimal routes. BGP, the protocol of the internet backbone, handles inter-domain routing on a global scale. All these protocols share a common goal: efficient data packet delivery by finding the optimal path.

RPC, on the other hand, focuses on application-level communication. It provides a mechanism for one program to execute a procedure or function in another program, possibly residing on a different machine. Instead of focusing on network paths, RPC abstracts the underlying network details, allowing developers to write distributed applications without explicitly dealing with network sockets, data serialization, or other low-level network complexities. Think of it like a highly specialized messenger service: you provide the message (the procedure call) and the recipient’s address (the remote machine), and the RPC system handles the delivery and response, transparently managing the network communication.

The crucial difference lies in their scope and objective. Routing protocols deal with network-level routing decisions, shaping the flow of data across the entire network infrastructure. RPC, however, concerns itself with inter-process communication, simplifying the interaction between applications regardless of their physical location. While RPC uses the network as a transport mechanism, its primary function is not to route data packets across the network but to facilitate direct application-to-application communication.

In conclusion, while both RPC and routing protocols operate within networked environments, they serve vastly different purposes. RPC is a mechanism for inter-process communication, providing an abstraction layer over network details, while routing protocols are responsible for directing data traffic across the network. Therefore, RPC is not a valid routing protocol. Its role lies in application communication, not network path determination.