Link State vs. Distance Vector Routing

💡 The Core Idea

There are two fundamental approaches to network routing:

Link State (LS): Every router has a complete map of the network (Global knowledge).
Distance Vector (DV): Routers only know the distance to their neighbors and what their neighbors tell them (Local knowledge).

Feature	Link State (e.g., OSPF)	Distance Vector (e.g., RIP)
Knowledge	Global (Topology map)	Local (Neighbors’ vectors)
Algorithm	Dijkstra’s Algorithm	Bellman-Ford Algorithm
Updates	Broadcasts (Flooding) link status to all nodes	Exchanges distance vectors only with neighbors
Convergence	Fast, but computationally heavy ( $O(n^2)$ )	Slower, susceptible to routing loops (Count-to-Infinity)