CS 341

Enhanced IGRP
(EIGRP)

introduction

Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP) is a

proprietary Cisco protocol that runs on Cisco routers. Enhanced
IGRP (EIGRP) is a classless, enhanced distance-vector protocol that
gives us a real edge over another Cisco proprietary protocol, Interior
Gateway Routing Protocol (IGRP). Like IGRP, EIGRP uses the
concept of an autonomous system to describe the set of contiguous
routers that run the same routing protocol and share routing
Information. But unlike IGRP, EIGRP includes the subnet mask in
its route updates. EIGRP is sometimes referred to as a hybrid routing
protocol because it has characteristics of both distance-vector and
link-state protocols. For example, EIGRP doesnt send link-state
packets as OSPF does; instead, it sends traditional distance-vector
updates containing information about networks plus the cost of

introduction

reaching them from the perspective of the advertising router. And

EIGRP has link-state characteristics as wellit synchronizes routing
tables between neighbors at
startup, and then sends specific updates only when topology changes
occur. This makes EIGRP suitable for very large networks. EIGRP
has a maximum hop count of 255.
There are a number of powerful features that make EIGRP a real
standout from IGRP and other protocols. The main ones are listed
here;Support for IP, IPX, and AppleTalk via protocol-dependent modules
Considered classless (same as RIPv2 and OSPF)

introduction

Support for VLSM/CIDR

Support for summaries and discontiguous networks
Efficient neighbor discovery
Communication via Reliable Transport Protocol (RTP)
Best path selection via Diffusing Update Algorithm (DUAL).

Protocol-Dependent
Modules

One of the most interesting features of EIGRP is that it provides

routing support for multiple Network layer protocols: IP, IPX, and
AppleTalk. The only other routing protocol that comes close and
supports multiple network layer protocols is Intermediate Systemto-Intermediate System (IS-IS) , but it only supports IP and
Connectionless Network Service (CLNS)
EIGRP supports different Network layer protocols through the use
of protocol-dependent modules (PDMs) . Each EIGRP PDM will
maintain a separate series of tables containing the routing
information that applies to a specific protocol. What this means to
you is that there will be IP/EIGRP tables, IPX/EIGRP tables, and
AppleTalk/EIGRP tables

Neighbor Discovery

Before EIGRP routers are willing to exchange routes with each

other, they must become neighbors. There are three conditions
that must be met for neighborship stablishment:-

Hello or ACK received

AS numbers match
Identical metrics (K values)

Link-state protocols tend to use Hello messages to establish

neighborship (also called adjacencies) because they normally do
not send out periodic route updates, and there has to be some
mechanism to help neighbors realize when a new peer has
moved in, or an old one has left or gone down. To maintain the
neighborship relationship, EIGRP routers must also continue
receiving Hellos from their neighbors.

Neighbor Discovery

EIGRP routers that belong to different autonomous systems

(ASes) dont automatically share routing information and they
dont become neighbors. This behavior can be a real benefit
when used in larger networks to reduce the amount of route
information propagated through a specific AS. The only catch is
that you might have to take care of redistribution between the
different ASes manually.
The only time EIGRP advertises its entire routing table is when
it discovers a new neighbor and forms an adjacency with it
through the exchange of Hello packets. When this happens, both
neighbors advertise their entire routing tables to one another.
After each has learned its neighbors routes, only changes to the
routing table are propagated from then on

Neighbor Discovery

When EIGRP routers receive their neighbors updates, they

store them in a local topology table. This table contains all
known routes from all known neighbors, and serves as the raw
material from which the best routes are selected and placed into
the routing table.

The Technology used

Enhanced IGRP used four technologies that differentiate it

from other routing technologies delivering of EIGRP
packets to all neighbours.
a) Neighbour discover/recover: Enables routers to learn
about routes on their directly attached network. The
process of discovering when a router is unreachable or
inoperative is achieved with low overhead by sending
small hello packets. As long as a neighbour router receive
these hello packets its assumed that they are functioning.
b) Reliable transport Protocol (RTP). Responsible for
guaranteed, or orderly. On a multi-access network such as
the Ethernet it is not necessary to send hello packets

The Technology used

reliably to all individual neighbours, EIGRP sends a single

multicast hello packet containing an indicator to inform receivers
that the packet need not acknowledged. There is a provision for
sending multicast packets quickly when unacknowledged
packets are pending, this help ensure that convergence time
remain low in the presence of varying speed links.
c) DUAL finite state machine: It traces all routers advertised by
neighbouring routers and uses distance information to select
efficient, loop free path and then selects routes for insertion into
the routing table based on a feasible successor. A feasible
successor is a neighbour router used for packet forwarding that is
a least-cost path to a destination that is guaranteed not to
be in a routing loop

The Technology used

d) Protocol dependent modules. IP Enhanced IGRP is

responsible for redistributing routes learned by other IP
routing protocols. For efficient only certain Enhanced
IGRP packets are transmitted reliably.

EIGRP Metrics

Another really sweet thing about EIGRP is that unlike

many other protocols that use a single factor to compare
routes and select the best possible path, EIGRP can use a
combination of four:
Bandwidth
Delay
Load
Reliability
Like IGRP, EIGRP uses only bandwidth and delay of the
line to determine the best path to a remote network by
default

Configuring EIGRP(IP)

There are two modes from which EIGRP commands are

entered: router configuration mode and interface configuration
mode. Router configuration mode enables the protocol,
determines which networks will run EIGRP, and sets global
characteristics. Interface configuration mode allows
customization of summaries, metrics, timers, and bandwidth.
This course objectives, focuses on the global characteristics
only.
To start an EIGRP session on a router, use the router eigrp
command followed by the autonomous system number of your
network. You then enter the network numbers connected
to the router using the network command followed by the
network number.

Configuring EIGRP(IP)

Lets look at an example of enabling EIGRP for

autonomous system 20 on a router connected to two
networks, with the network numbers being 10.3.1.0/24 and
172.16.10.0/24:
Router#config t
Router(config)#router eigrp 20
Router(config-router)#network 172.16.0.0
Router(config-router)#network 10.0.0.0

Say you need to stop EIGRP from working on a specific

interface, such as a BRI interface or a serial connection to
the Internet. To do that, you would flag the interface as
passive using the passive-interface interface command.
The following command shows you how to make interface
serial 0/1 a passive interface:

Configuring EIGRP(IP)

Router(config)#router eigrp 20
Router(config-router)#passive-interface serial 0/1

Doing this will prohibit the interface from sending or

receiving Hello packets, and as a result, stop it from
forming adjacencies. This means that it wont send or
receive route information on this interface.
Exercise
configure that same network that we configured in the last
chapter with RIP, now with EIGRP.

Configuring Discontiguous
Networks

Theres one more configuration that you need to be aware

of that has to do with auto summarization. Both routers, by
default, would automatically summarize the classful
boundaries and routing dont work sometimes.
By using the no auto-summary command, EIGRP will
advertise all the subnets between the two routers. If the
networks were larger, you could then provide manual
summarization on these same boundaries.

Verifying EIGRP

There are several commands that can be used on a router to

help you troubleshoot and verify the EIGRP configuration.
Table bellow contains all of the commands that are used in
conjunction with verifying EIGRP operation, and offers a
brief description of what each command does.

Verifying EIGRP

Home Work

Ready about IS-IS

Troubleshooting with RIP,IGRP, EIGRP
and OSPF