Final answer:
Link state protocols require more memory and processing power to manage and calculate optimal routing paths for larger network topologies, not for faster data transmission, reducing latency, or improving energy efficiency.
Step-by-step explanation:
The reason behind link state protocols requiring more memory and processing power is B) To handle larger network topologies. Link state protocols, such as OSPF (Open Shortest Path First) and ISIS (Intermediate System to Intermediate System), use a database called the link state database to store information about all the links, routers, and networks in the network. This database needs to hold all the data to build a detailed map of the entire network, which is required to compute optimal routes and paths for packet forwarding.As the network topology gets larger, the link state database needs to store more information, resulting in a higher memory requirement. Additionally, processing power is needed to perform the calculations required to compute optimal routes based on the information stored in the database.Therefore, the correct answer is B) To handle larger network topologies.
The reason behind link state protocols requiring more memory and more processing power is to handle larger network topologies (Option B). Link state protocols maintain a complete map of the network topology and the status of links to facilitate routing decisions. Every router in a link state protocol-managed network must store a full database of the network's topology which grows in size with the complexity of the network. This requires more memory to hold all of the detailed topology information. Moreover, these protocols need to frequently calculate the best paths through the network using algorithms such as Dijkstra's algorithm, which is CPU intensive, thus requiring more processing power to manage these calculations efficiently.