EIGRP Summarization

In this article we’ll take a look at EIGRP summarization. The cool thing about EIGRP and
summarization is that it’s easy to do and can be done on the interface-level. Here’s the topology that we’ll
use:

Let’s create a basic EIGRP configuration:

Spade(config)#router eigrp 1
Spade(config-router)#no auto-summary
Spade(config-router)#network 192.168.12.0
Spade(config-router)#network 172.16.0.0
Hearts(config)#router eigrp 1
Hearts(config-router)#no auto-summary
Hearts(config-router)#network 192.168.12.0

Just a basic EIGRP configuration. This is what the routing table of router Hearts looks like:

Hearts#show ip route eigrp

172.16.0.0/24 is subnetted, 2 subnets
D 172.16.0.0 [90/30720] via 192.168.12.1, 00:02:28,
FastEthernet0/0
D 172.16.1.0 [90/30720] via 192.168.12.1, 00:02:28,
FastEthernet0/0

Two entries as expected. Now let’s create that summary:

Spade(config)#interface fastEthernet 2/0

Spade(config-if)#ip summary-address eigrp 1 172.16.0.0 255.255.254.0

Use the ip summary-address eigrp command to specify the summary. Now the routing table will look like
this:
Hearts#show ip route eigrp
172.16.0.0/23 is subnetted, 1 subnets
D 172.16.0.0 [90/30720] via 192.168.12.1, 00:00:53,
FastEthernet0/0

EIGRP Summarization CNE - MAHER ABDELSHKOUR

The two networks disappear and a single entry will appear on router Hearts. Something will change on
router Spade as well:

Spade#show ip route eigrp

172.16.0.0/16 is variably subnetted, 3 subnets, 2 masks
D 172.16.0.0/23 is a summary, 00:01:38, Null0

EIGRP will create an entry in the routing table for the summary and it’s pointing to the null0 interface. It
does this to protect itself against routing loops. When you use summaries it’s possible that other routers
will send traffic to you for networks that you have no clue about where they are. When this happens the
traffic will be forwarded to the null0 interface and dropped.

EIGRP Summarization CNE - MAHER ABDELSHKOUR