In z/OS Communications Server TCP/IP, dynamic routing is the dynamic updating of internal routing tables when changes to the network occur. No manual changes to those tables are needed when network changes occur.

For IPv4, the two dynamic routing protocols available are:

• Routing Information Protocol (RIP): RIP uses the number of hops, or hop count, to determine the best possible route to a host or network. It is designed to manage a relatively small network.

• Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) protocol: OSPF is a link-state routing protocol. In a link-state routing protocol, each router maintains a database describing the autonomous system's topology. Each individual piece of this database is a particular router's local state (for example, the router's usable interfaces and reachable neighbors). The router distributes its local state throughout the autonomous system by flooding.

For IPv6, the dynamic routing protocols available are:

• the Router Discovery protocol. In this protocol, the z/OS Communications Server host learns about routes from router advertisements received from adjacent routers.
  

• the IPv6 OSPF and IPv6 RIP dynamic routing protocols of OMPROUTE