RIP was one of the earliest dynamic routing protocols to work with IP addresses. As such, it is not as complex as more recent protocols. However, RIP is a big step forward from simple static routing.

While RIP may be slow in response to network outages, static routing has zero response. The same is true for convergence — static routing has zero convergence. Both RIP and static routing have the limited hop count, so its not a strength or a weakness. Count to infinity can be a problem, but typically can be fixed as it happens or is the result of a network outage that would cause even worse problems on static routing network.

This compares to static routing where each time a packet needs to be routed, the FortiGate unit can only send it to the next hop towards the destination. That next hop then forwards it, and so on until it arrives at its destination. RIP keeps more routing information on each router so your FortiGate unit can send the packet farther towards its destination before it has to be routed again towards its destination. RIP reduces the amount of table lookups and therefore fewer network resources than static routing. Also since RIP is updated on neighboring routes it is aware of new routes or dead routes that static routing would not be aware of.

Overall, RIP is a large step forward when compared to static routing.