EIGRP

EIGRP is an advanced distance vector routing protocol developed by Cisco. EIGRP is an advanced distance vector or hybrid routing protocol that includes the following features: Rapid convergence: EIGRP uses the Diffusing Update Algorithm (DUAL) to achieve rapid convergence. A router that uses EIGRP stores all available backup routes for destinations so that it can quickly adapt to alternate routes. Reduced bandwidth usage: EIGRP does not make periodic updates. Instead, it sends partial updates when the path or the metric changes for that route. Classless routing: EIGRP supports discontiguous subnetworks and variable-length subnet masks (VLSM). Less overhead: EIGRP uses multicast and unicast rather than broadcast Load balancing: EIGRP supports unequal metric load balancing

Easy summarization:

In EIGRP, the best route is called a successor route while a backup route is called the feasible successor. To determine the best route (successor) and the backup route (feasible successor) to a destination, EIGRP uses the following two parameters: Advertised distance: The EIGRP metric for an EIGRP neighbor to reach a particular network Feasible distance: The advertised distance for a particular network learned from an EIGRP neighbor plus the EIGRP metric to reach that neighbor

Five types of EIGRP packets exist, further categorized as reliable packets and unreliable packets. The reliable EIGRP packets are as follows: Update Update packets contain EIGRP routing updates sent to an EIGRP neighbor. Query Queries are sent to neighbors when a route is not available and the router needs to ask the status of the route for fast convergence. Reply Reply packets to the queries contain the status of the route being queried for. The unreliable EIGRP packets are as follows: Hello Hello packets are used to establish EIGRP neighbor relationships across a link. Acknowledgment Acknowledgment packets ensure reliable delivery of EIGRP packets. All the EIGRP packets are sent through EIGRP multicast address 224.0.0.10.

EIGRP default administrative distances Summary routes = 5 Internal routes = 90 Imported routes = 170

The formula for calculating EIGRP metric is:

Metric = 256*((K1*Bw) + (K2*Bw)/(256-Load) + (K3*Delay)*(K5/(Reliability + K4)))

k1=bandwidth k2=load k3=delay k4=reliability k5=MTU K1 = 1 and K3 = 1 and rest all are Zero.

Configuring and Verifying EIGRP Use the router eigrp and network commands to create an EIGRP routing process. Note that EIGRP requires an autonomous system (AS) number. The AS number does not have to be registered as is the case when routing on the Internet with the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) routing protocol. However, all routers within an AS must use the same AS number to exchange routing information with each other. Figure 5-3 shows the EIGRP configuration of a simple network.

Troubleshooting commands:

show ip eigrp interfaces: Lists the working interfaces on which EIGRP is enabled (based on the network commands); it omits passive interfaces. show ip protocols: Lists the contents of the network configuration commands for each routing process, and a list of neighbor IP addresses. show ip eigrp neighbors: Lists known neighbors; does not list neighbors for which some mismatched parameter is preventing a valid EIGRP neighbor relationship. show ip eigrp topology: Lists all successor and feasible successor routes known to this router. It does not list all known topology details. show ip route: Lists the contents of the IP routing table, listing EIGRP-learned routes with a code of D on the left side of the output.