EIGRP Characteristics

EIGRP combines the advantages of Link State and Distance Vector Routing Protocols.

Although EIGRP uses a Hello protocol to discover neighbors and form Neighbor relationships like a
Link State Protocol, EIGRP is based on key distance vector routing protocols principles in which
information about the rest of the network is learnt from directly connected neighbors. EIGRP uses a
Multicast address of 224.0.0.10 to communicate to its neighbors. The key EIGRP characteristics are:

EIGRP stores all available routes including backup paths for destination networks so that it can
quickly adapt to alternate paths. If the primary route in the routing table is lost, the backup route is
immediately added to the routing table.

EIGRP supports Equal and Unequal Cost Load Balancing. It is the only protocol to support Unequal
Load Balancing.
EIGRP Characteristics
EIGRP supports the validation of neighbors by using Authentication using MD5 based Keys.
Authentication makes sure that the routes received by the router are from Trusted sources /
Routers.

EIGRP also supports the Summarization of routes. It allows you the ability to send a summary route
to represent a group of routes allowing you to cut down on the size of the routing table.

EIGRP advertises the network along with it’s subnet mask making it a Classless Routing Protocol. It
supports features like VLSM.

EIGRP sends the full routing table initially to its neighbor. The updates have to be acknowledged by
the neighbor. Once the updates are acknowledged, EIGRP sends a hello packet to inform the
neighbor that it is still alive and no new updates are there to be sent. In case of any update, only the
new update is sent [Incremental Update].
EIGRP Timers
Hello Timer: Once the EIGRP neighbors exchange the
routing tables and acknowledge the updates, they send
Hello packets to let the neighbor know that it is still up
and the routes are still valid. The default EIGRP Hello
time is 5 seconds.
Hold Timer: If a router does not receive a hello for 15
seconds, it will consider the neighbor down and delete all
the routes from it.
Metric Calculations
EIGRP is a Distance Vector Routing Protocol. It calculates the
best route based on Bandwidth and Latency.
• Bandwidth: The slowest link from your router to the destination is
taken into consideration while calculating the metric.
• Delay: The sum of latency on all the interfaces from your router to the
destination is taken into consideration while calculating the metric.

 The metric calculation formula for EIGRP is :

Metric = [107/Bandwidth(min) + Delay(sum)/10] * 256

EIGRP Tables
EIGRP Maintains 3 tables:

• Neighbor Table: It lists all the directly connected current EIGRP routers that have
established a neighbor relationship with your router.

• Topology Table: It contains the Best routes and the backup routes to all the
destinations. The best route is known as the Successor Route and the backup route
is known as a Feasible Successor Route. You can have multiple Successor routes.

• Routing Table: EIGRP injects the Best routes (Successor routes) into the Routing
table.
Enabling EIGRP
All Routing Protocols are enabled by using the “Router” command.

In order to enable EIGRP, you use the “Router EIGRP” command followed by the
Autonomous-System #.

The AS # needs to match on the 2 routers that are forming a neighbor relationship.
The AS # range is 1 -65535.

To enable EIGRP, you type

R1(config)#Router EIGRP 100

R1(config-router)#
Network Command
Network Command is used by the Routing Protocols on the specified Interface.
By Enabling the routing protocol under the interface, it will take the following 2
actions:
• 1. It will allow the router to send and receive EIGRP updates on that interface.
• 2. It will send/advertise this interface network on other EIGRP enabled interfaces.
In EIGRP, the network command allows you the ability to enable EIGRP on a Major
network or subnets. The subnets can be specified using a Inverse Mask.
You enable EIGRP on all the directly connected interfaces.
R1(config)#Router EIGRP 100
R1(config-router)#Network 10.1.1.0 0.0.0.255
R1(config-router)#Network 11.0.0.0
R1(config-router)#Network 192.1.13.0
Verification Commands
To verify if the routes have propagated, use the “Show IP Route”
command.
It will displays all the routes that the router is aware of. This includes
the Directly Connected Routes and the Routes the router has learnt
thru a dynamic routing protocol.
You can also use the “Show IP Route EIGRP” command to display only
the routes in the routing table that are learnt via the EIGRP protocol.
Use the Ping command that you have full reachability from each Router.
Load Balancing with EIGRP
EIGRP Supports 2 types of Load Balancing:

• Equal Cost Load Balancing: It is the ability of a router to distribute traffic over
multiple paths that have the same metric. By default, EIGRP load balancing is
enabled and supports upto over 4 equal paths. This can be increased to 32
paths by using the maximum-paths router configuration command.

• Unequal Cost Load Balancing: EIGRP can also load balance across multiple
paths that have different metrics. By default, this feature is off. It can be
turned on by using the variance router configuration command. You specify
the maximum ratio between the best path and the worse path to enable it.