Babel (protocol)

The Babel routing protocol is a distance-vector routing protocol for Internet Protocol packet-switched networks that is designed to be robust and efficient on both wireless mesh networks and wired networks.

Babel is based on the ideas in Destination-Sequenced Distance Vector routing (DSDV), Ad hoc On-Demand Distance Vector Routing (AODV), and Cisco's Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP), but it uses a variant of Expected Transmission Count (ETX) link cost estimation rather than a simple hop-count metric. It employs several techniques to ensure the absence of routing pathologies, such as routing loops.

Babel operates on IPv4 and IPv6 networks. It has been reported to be a robust protocol and to have fast convergence properties.

Two implementations of Babel are freely available: the standalone sample implementation, and a version that is integrated into the Quagga routing suite.