Editing Distance-vector routing protocol (section)

===Workarounds and solutions===
[[Routing Information Protocol|RIP]] uses the [[Split horizon route advertisement|split horizon]] with poison reverse technique to reduce the chance of forming loops and uses a maximum number of hops to counter the 'count to infinity' problem. These measures avoid the formation of routing loops in some, but not all, cases.{{Ref RFC|1058|section=2.2.2}}  The addition of a ''hold time'' (refusing route updates for a few minutes after a route retraction) avoids loop formation in virtually all cases, but causes a significant increase in convergence times.

More recently, a number of loop-free distance vector protocols have been developed — notable examples are [[EIGRP]], [[DSDV]] and [[Babel (protocol)|Babel]].  These avoid loop formation in all cases, but suffer from increased complexity, and their deployment has been slowed down by the success of [[link state routing protocol]]s such as [[OSPF]].