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Commonly confused · Routing & Switching

Distance Vector vs Link-State Routing: What's the Difference?

Distance vector routers share their routing tables with direct neighbors and trust what they hear, often called routing by rumor. Link-state routers flood information about their own links to every router in the area so each builds an identical topology map and computes shortest paths itself.

Distance Vector Routing

vs

Link-State Routing

Distance Vector RoutingLink-State Routing
Knowledge of networkOnly distance and direction from neighborsComplete topology of the area
UpdatesPeriodic full tables (classic RIP)Triggered LSAs on changes, plus periodic refresh
AlgorithmBellman-FordDijkstra SPF
ConvergenceSlowerFaster
Loop preventionSplit horizon, route poisoning, hold-down timersFull topology knowledge
Resource usageLower CPU and memoryHigher CPU and memory
ExamplesRIP (EIGRP is advanced distance vector)OSPF, IS-IS
Remember it

Distance vector trusts gossip; link state reads the map itself.

Exam tip

Exams ask you to classify protocols and to name loop-prevention techniques. RIP is distance vector, OSPF and IS-IS are link state, and EIGRP is called advanced distance vector or hybrid.

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