Cisco routers do have ticks in the routing table and in RIP packets, but in 9.1 and earlier the hop count is the only route factor. In 9.21 and later ticks are the primary route metric and hops are a tie breaker.
Ticks are an advantage when there are equal cost paths with different bandwidths.
In those cases, a Cisco router running 9.1 software might pick a less desirable path. In 9.21 and later adjust the ipx delay x , where x is the appropriate ticks value for that bandwidth. In 9.21 and later, LAN interfaces have a default ticks value of 1 and WAN interfaces have a default ticks value of 6. If we don't add a proper ticks to the ticks we receive, then the timeout might be set too short. There has been a handful of verified cases where adjusting the interface delay in 9.1, or the ipx delay in 9.21 or later, to a more accurate ticks value resolved client session timeouts.