Administrative distance

A network can use more than one routing protocol, and routers on the network can learn
about a route from multiple sources. Routers need to find a way to select a better path.
Administrative distance number is used by routers to find out which route is better (lower
number is better). For example, if the same route is learned from RIP and EIGRP, a
Cisco router chooses EIGRP route and stores the route in the routing table. This is
because EIGRP routes have, by default, an administrative distance of 90, while RIP
route have a higher administrative distance of 120.

You can display the administrative distance of all routes on your router by typing
the show ip route command:

In the case above, the router has only one route in its routing table learned from a
dynamic routing protocols , an EIGRP route.

The following table lists the administrative distance default values: