Distance Vector Routing (DVR) protocols use a fully distributed algorithm that finds the shortest path by solving the Bellman-Ford algorithm at each node. This is an implementation of a distributed version of the Bellman-Ford algorithm and it can be used to calculate routing paths in a network.
In "pure" DVR protocols, the hop count determines the distance between nodes. But, some DVR protocols that operate at higher levels (like BGP) make routing decisions based on business relationships (or weightings) in addition to a hop count. Our implementation considers weighted (including negative weights), directed links in our network topologies (represented in Topology.py).
In this simulation, we can think of nodes (i.e., router; represented in Node.py) as individual autonomous systems (ASes) and the weights on the links as a reflection of the business relationship between ASes.
DistanceVector.py is a specialization of the Node class that represents a network node running the DVR algorithm.
To simulate a specific topology, execute the run.sh bash script: ./run.sh *Topo
This will execute the DVR algorithm on the topology defined in *Topo.txt and log the results to *Topo.log. For example: ./run.sh topo1 will execute the DVR algorithm on the topology defined in topo1.txt and log the results to topo1.log. See the DVR_tests folder for examples of correctly formatted topology files and an incorrectly formatted topology file (BadTopo.txt).