The enabling technology for this intelligent network is the SS7 stack. Trillium Digital Systems and Datakinetics are commercial suppliers of the SS7 stack ported to VxWorks. In large, rapidly changing environments like the Internet, a manual system of configuring routers simply cannot respond fast enough to changes or handle problems. WindNet RIP is included in the stack, while WindNet OSPF is an optional add-on. WindNet RIP can be configured into active or passive mode.
Active routers advertise their routes to others.
Passive, or silent, machines listen and update their routes based on the advertisements but do not advertise. A router running RIP in active mode broadcasts a message every 30 seconds. WindNet RIP allows all timers in RIP to be configurable, including the advertise timer, the timeout timer and the garbage-collection timer. An interior gateway protocol, OSPF is a significant improvement over RIP in internetworking operations. Compared to RIP, which requires more frequent updates, OSPF generates less network traffic and, in general, consumes less CPU time.