RIP supports multi-process and multi-instance to simplify network management and improve service control efficiency. Multi-process allows a set of interfaces to be associated with a specific RIP process, which ensures that the specific RIP process performs all the protocol operations only on this set of interfaces. Therefore, multiple RIP processes can run on one router, and each process manages a unique set of interfaces. In addition, the routing data of each RIP process is independent; however, processes can import routes from each other.
On routers that support VPN, each RIP process is associated with a specific VPN instance. Therefore, all the interfaces associated with the RIP process need to be associated with the RIP process-related VPN instance.