ARP versus ES-IS: Performance evaluation of neighbour-greeting protocols

Neighbour greeting is the process by which network nodes discover adjacent nodes and achieve network-layer reachability. The Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) and End-System to Intermediate-System Routing Information Exchange Protocol (ES-IS) offer competing approaches to neighbour greeting. This paper presents a detailed analysis of the performance of these protocols and attempts to answer the question of whether one approach is better than the other. The analysis compares packet delay, routing efficiency, protocol processing, bandwidth utilization and memory requirements of each approach. Results presented in this paper show that ES-IS is more efficient than ARP and provides significantly enhanced services to connectionless network-layer entities.