EIGRP (Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol)

➢ EIGRP was created by Cisco.

➢ Advanced distance vector or Hybrid routing protocol.
➢ Multicast or unicast is used for exchange of information.
➢ multicast address 224.0.0.10.
EIGRP does not use broadcast packets to send information to other
neighbors but will use multicast or unicast. Besides IPv4 you can also
use EIGRP to route IPv6 or even some older network layer protocols like
IPX or AppleTalk. EIGRP is 100% loop-free.
EIGRP runs directly on top of the IP header.
EIGRP has its own protocol number which is 88.

EIGRP also uses a reliable transport mechanism to guarantee the

ordered delivery of all EIGRP packets to its neighbors. The transport
supports the intermixed transmission of Multicast and unicast packets
EIGRP messages types:
1. HELLO packets. Sent out at regular intervals to facilitate the
neighbor discovery process. (224.0.0.10)
2. QUERY packets. Used by a router to advertise that a route is in an
active state and to request alternate path information from
neighbors(multicast).
3. REPLY packets. Sent after an entire QUERY packet has been
received to acknowledge that packet's receipt. (unicast)
4. REQUEST packets. Used to request specific information from one
or more neighbors, similar to QUERY packets but sent unreliably.
5. UPDATE packets. Convey information about destinations and
their reachability.(at change (224.0.0.10) at startup unicast)
6. Partial update-These messages are exchanged when there is a
topology change and new links are added. It contains only the
new routes, not all the routes. These messages are multicast.
7. ACK packets are used to acknowledge the receipt of update,
query and replay packets. ACK packets are sent by using unicast.
Note:-Hello and acknowledgment packets do not require any
acknowledgment.
Reply, query, update messages are reliable messages require
acknowledgement.
Timers
Hello timer- The interval in which EIGRP sends a hello message on an
interface. It is 5 seconds by default.
Dead timer- The interval in which the neighbor will be declared dead if
it is not able to send the hello packet. It is 15 seconds by default.
What are the Benefits of EIGRP?

• It has a faster convergence.

• There is no need to update the routing tables by hand.
• It has a low network resource usage as it only sends HELLO
packets when the network is stable.
• It either uses unequal-cost-load-balancing or equal-cost
multipath balancing to use links more efficiently.
• It is loop-free therefore, it improves video and voice quality.

How Does The EIGRP Choose The Best Path?

EIGRP major metrics.
• Bandwidth
• Delay
• Load
• Reliability
EIGRP Operation Principles

EIGRP has some core principles that allow it to be efficient and

scalable with its fast convergence features. Some of these operation
principles are:

• Protocol-dependent modules (PDMs): EIGRP uses separate PDMs

for each routed protocol, allowing it to operate more independently
and allows for more fine-tuned configuration.
• Diffusing Update Algorithm (DUAL): EIGRP uses DUAL to converge
quickly and allows it to operate in a loop-free topology.
• Reliable Transport Protocol (RTP): RTP gives EIGRP its reliability,
enabling it to consistently deliver packets between neighboring
routers.
• Neighbor relationships: EIGRP creates neighbor relationships by
using hello packets to discover nearby routers.

To be neighbors:

➢ Must be directly connected.

➢ Must use the same AS number.
➢ Must use the same authentication.
➢ Must use the same k-values.

At startup

 Neighbor Discovery: all routers send hello with multicast address

224.0.0.10 this hello contains information about the router and its
neighbor.
 Database exchange: when the first router sends its hello to the
other router and the other router replies with its hello the two
routers send an update message containing the full routing table.

EIGRP send full routing table at startup (this feature from RIP ) note (rip
protocol send its full routing table periodicaly)
EIGRP send partial update if a change happened in the network (this
feature from the ospf (link state)).
 Build the routing table using the lowest metric.
At convergence
The router will send a hello as a keepalive each hello interval.
Hello interval.
At high speed network (BW>= 1.54mbps)
Hello interval = 5 sec
Hold (dead) interval = 15 sec
At low speed network (BW <1.54Mbps)
Hello interval = 60 sec
Hold interval = 180 sec
Fram relay is low speed network even if BW >1.54
This timmer shouldn’t equal in all routers but the maximum hello
interval in any router sould be less than the minmum hold interval in
any router.
At change
The router will send patial triggered update.
Passive interface
stop sending and receving update
Metric =DUAL equation
It is called DUAL in EIGRP. (Diffusion update algorithm)

EIGRP uses a rich set of metrics namely bandwidth, delay, load and
reliability which we will cover later. These values will be put into a formula
and each link will be assigned a metric. The lower these metrics the
better.
feasible distance (loop prevention)
Advertised distance: How far the destination is away for your
neighbor.
Feasible distance: The total distance to the destination. (is the metric )
The best path to the destination is called the successor!
The successor will be copied from the topology table to the routing
table.
With EIGRP however it’s possible to have a backup path which we call
the feasible successor. This means if the successor down the feasible
successor work in no time .the route be a feasible successor when the
it’s advertise distance lease than the feasible distance for the best
route (successor).
Selecting the best path with EIGRP works a bit different than other routing
protocols.

In the picture above I have assigned some values on the interfaces, if you
would look on a real EIGRP router you’ll see the numbers are very high and
a bit annoying to work with.

Router Carl will advertise to router Ann its metric towards the destination.
Basically router Carl is saying to router Ann: “It costs me 5 to get there”.
This is called the advertised distance.
Router Ann has a topology table and in this topology table it will save
this metric, the advertised distance to reach this destination is 5.

We know the advertised distance is 5 since this is what router Carl told us.
We also know the metric of the link between router Ann and router Carl
since this is directly connected. Router Ann now knows the metric for the
total path to the destination, this total path is called the feasible
distance and it will be saved in the topology table.
The advertised distance, your neighbor tells you how far it is for him to
reach the destination and the feasible distance which is your total distance
to get to the destination.

Router Ann is sending its feasible distance towards router KingKong

which is 15. Router KingKong will save this information in the topology table
as the advertised distance. Router Ann is “telling” router KingKong the
distance is 15.
Router KingKong now knows how far the destination is away for Router
Ann and since we know the metric for the link between router KingKong
and Ann it can also calculate the total distance which is called the
feasible distance. This information is saved in the topology table.
EIGRP Table

Route status in EIGRP:

Active: Active is not good since it means we have lost information
about a certain network and EIGRP doesn’t know another way of
reaching this network. (the interface not work )
Passive: Passive is good...we like routing information to be passive
which means that we have learned information about a network and
there are no changes in the topology table. (Stable).
Reply Status: EIGRP will track all the query packets it has sent to
neighbors since you need a reply in return.
Sia Status (Stuck in Active): This is a bad one...it means that EIGRP
has not received a reply to a query packet from one of the
neighbors within the allowed time (about 3 minutes). When this
happens EIGRP will drop the neighbor adjacency and it will be stuck in
active.
Note
It is recommended to make manually summerization as match you can
(in all node in the network) to reduce quary domain.
EIGRP Authentication
Routing protocols can be configured to prevent receiving false routing
updates and EIGRP is no exception. If you don’t use authentication and you
are running EIGRP someone could try to form an EIGRP neighbor adjacency
with one of your routers and try to mess with your network.
What options do we have to authenticate EIGRP?

• Plaintext authentication.
• MD5 authentication.
Plaintext will authenticate EIGRP packets but it’s sent in the clear so
everyone with a sniffer can see your password. We don’t want that to
happen so it’s better to use MD5 which creates hashes.
What does authentication offer us?

• Your router will authenticate the source of each routing update

packet that it will receive.
• Prevents false routing updates from sources that are not approved.
• Ignore malicious routing updates.
EIGRP & OSPF
EIGRP Configuration
The basic configuration process sets up the protocol and defines which
interfaces it will run on:
Router(config)# router eigrp 100
Router(config-router)# network 192.168.1.0 0.0.0.255
Router(config-router)# network 10.1.1.0 0.0.0.255
Router(config-router)# network 172.16.0.0 0.0.255.255
To display neighboring routers, we enter: show ip eigrp neighbors
To show the topology table and our feasible successors: show ip eigrp
topology
To show the EIGRP routing table, we would use: show ip route eigrp
Fine-Tuning EIGRP Parameters

• Metrics and bandwidth: EIGRP uses bandwidth and delay as its

primary metrics for choosing the best routes. We would adjust
these values to help decide on the best path selection.
• Route summarization: Route summarization reduces the size of
routing tables and improves network stability.
• Authentication: EIGRP can use authentication to secure routing
updates between neighbors for added security.
• Stub routers: We can set up routers as stubs, which limits the
amount of EIGRP traffic we experience on the network and
reduces memory consumption on the router itself.

• Receive-only: The stub router will not advertise any network.

• Connected: allows the stub router to advertise directly connected
networks.
 • Static: allows the stub router to advertise static routes (you have to
redistribute them).
• Summary: allows the stub router to advertise summary routes.
• Redistribute: allows the stub router to advertise redistributed routes.
EIGRP Optimization and Troubleshooting
EIGRP makes the most of what it has by using two main techniques
when sending data across the network: equal-cost load balancing and
unequal-cost load balancing.
Equal-cost load balancing: This allows EIGRP to use multiple paths that
have the same cost (or metric, in networking terms) to send data
between two points. By default, EIGRP can use equal-cost load
balancing across up to 32 paths, which means that it uses 32 paths
simultaneously to send data in a divided stream to put less strain on a
single route by sharing the load.
Unequal-cost load balancing: If some routes perform poorly, EIGRP uses
a variance command to allow data to be sent across them if they are
within an acceptable range. This gives EIGRP flexibility when network
conditions are not ideal, allowing transmissions to succeed even when
performance is lacking across certain routes instead of failing outright.
The great thing about these two features is that they prevent bottlenecks
across available links instead of swamping the best route. By splitting
the load across multiple routes, EIGRP can use whatever resources are
available on the network to balance the load.
The variance option (Unequal-cost) of EIGRP provides a method
for balancing traffic over non-equal cost paths.
Allows EIGRP to load-balance across a networks successor router and
one or more feasible successor routes.
The variance value is based on the following logic: Include any routes
with a Feasible distance less than n times that of the successor routes
feasible distance.

Our successor is the route with an FD of 102072

 Variance = 2. 102072 * 2 = 204144 ; Include route A and B.
 Variance = 3. 102072 * 2 = 306216 ; Include route A,B and C
To configure the variance command, you simply use the command
variance.
Named EIGRP
The named EIGRP configuration is supported in Cisco IOS 15.0(1)M,
12.2(33)SRE, 12.2(33)XNE, and later releases.
This allows the EIGRP routing protocol to perform more accurate
calculations using gigabit and terabit links in the networks.
starting with IOS 15.4 and IOS XE 3.11, you can easily migrate the EIGRP
configuration from classic mode to named mode using the eigrp
upgrade-cli command. This feature supports IPv4 and IPv6 protocols
and does not require a restart of the EIGRP process to migrate into a
named EIGRP configuration.
EIGRP classic mode has several drawbacks, such as spread and
confused configuration, as well as a high number of similar but
different commands for IPv4 and IPv6. EIGRP named mode overcomes
these drawbacks and brings several benefits to the table, such as:

• EIGRP configuration is applied in a single place in the running

configuration.
• Combines the EIGRP configuration for both IPv4 and IPv6.
• Support for high-speed gigabit and terabit links.
• Backward compatible with classic EIGRP .
EIGRP Named Mode
EIGRP named mode This centralized the EIGRP configuration for both
IPv4 and IPv6 within a EIGRP virtual instance.
Within EIGRP named mode (i.e the virtual instance) there are address-
families configuration modes.

• address-family configuration mode - Either IPv4 or IPv6. Used to

configure the router-id or set the router as a stub router.
• address-family-interface configuration mode - Interface specific
commands. Such as setting the interface as a passive interface,
or setting the timers.
• address-family-topology configuration mode - Configuration that
directly affects the topology table of EIGRP. Such as setting the
variance or setting redistribution.
Note: EIGRP mode only changes the organization of the configuration, the
underlying EIGRP operation remains the same. For example, a device
running EIGRP named mode can fully interoperate with another device
running a non-named mode EIGRP configuration.
EIGRP Named Mode Configuration
Everything that used to be configured on the interface is now under the
same global configuration:

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