Chapter 2 Advanced Routing for FortiOS 5.0 : Dynamic Routing Overview : Comparison of dynamic routing protocols : Features of dynamic routing protocols : Convergence
  
Convergence
Convergence is the ability of a networking protocol to re-route around network outages. Static routing cannot do this. Dynamic routing protocols can all converge, but take various amounts of time to do this. Slow convergence can cause problems such as network loops which degrade network performance.
You may also hear robustness and redundancy used to describe networking protocols. In many ways they are the same thing as convergence. Robustness is the ability to keep working even though there are problems, including configuration problems as well as network outages. Redundancy involves having duplicate parts that can continue to function in the event of some malfunction, error, or outage. It is relatively easy to configure dynamic routing protocols to have backup routers and configurations that will continue to function no matter the network problem short of a total network failure.