The dispersion characteristics of a circular dielectric rod waveguide with period corrugations are analyzed with the mode matching method. After obtaining the rigorous dispersion equation, the dispersion curve for TE01 mode exciting is calculated by the improved Newton's method. The variations of the normalized center frequency and width as well as the maximum attenuation constant of the stopband with the geometry parameters of the periodic corrugation structure are given respectively. The convergence properties of numerical solutions are also discussed. Based on the analysis, some useful guidelines for the design of the band-rejection filters consisting of the periodic structure are thereby suggested.