Editing Zone Routing Protocol (section)

==How ZRP works==
If a packet's destination is in the same zone as the origin, the proactive protocol using an already stored routing table is used to deliver the packet immediately.

If the route extends outside the packet's originating zone, a reactive protocol takes over to check each successive zone in the route to see whether the destination is inside that zone.  This reduces the processing overhead for those routes. Once a zone is confirmed as containing the destination node, the proactive protocol, or stored route-listing table, is used to deliver the packet.

In this way packets with destinations within the same zone as the originating zone are delivered immediately using a stored [[routing table]]. Packets delivered to nodes outside the sending zone avoid the overhead of checking routing tables along the way by using the reactive protocol to check whether each zone encountered contains the destination node.

Thus ZRP reduces the control overhead for longer routes that would be necessary if using proactive routing protocols throughout the entire route, while eliminating the delays for routing within a zone that would be caused by the route-discovery processes of reactive routing protocols.