RIP uses timers to manage route updates and failure detection:
Update Timer (s): How often routers send their full routing table to neighbors.
Invalid Timer (s): If no update mentions a route for this long, mark it invalid but keep advertising it.
Holddown Timer (s): After marking a route invalid, ignore updates about it for this period. Prevents loops from stale information.
Flush Timer (s): Remove the route from the table entirely.
These timers mean RIP can take several minutes to converge after a failure. That's too slow for many production networks.