EIGRP Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP) is an enhanced version of IGRP.

IGRP is Cisco's Interior Gateway Routing Protocol used in TCP/IP and OSI internets. It is regarded as an interior gateway protocol (IGP) but has also been used extensively as an exterior gateway protocol for inter-domain routing.

Key capabilities that distinguish Enhanced IGRP (EIGRP) from other routing protocols include: fast convergence support for variable-length subnet mask support for partial updates Support for multiple network layer protocols

A router running EIGRP stores all its neighbors' routing tables so that it can quickly adapt to alternate routes. If no appropriate route exists, EIGRP queries its neighbors to discover an alternate route. These queries propagate until an alternate route is found.

The support of EIGRP for variable-length subnet masks permits routes to be automatically summarized on a network number boundary. In addition, EIGRP can be configured to summarize on any bit boundary at any interface. Metrics It is always necessary to discuss what a routing protocol uses for its metrics. In this case, EIGRP can use:

Bandwidth Delay Reliability Load

In most cases, EIGRP only uses Delay and Bandwidth with Bandwidth taking precedence. Special Requirements: EIGRP is a Cisco proprietary protocol. So, either all the routers in the Internetwork must be Cisco routers, or the routers should be EIGRP capable. Before starting, if you have not set the bandwidth of the interfaces, set them now. For correct routing decisions, you need to set the bandwidth for the serial interfaces depending on the WAN technologies that you are using.

Configuration Router# conf t Router(config)# router eigrp {AS number} Router(config-router)# network 192.168.0.0 0.0.255.255 Router(config-router)#eigrp log-neighbor-changes

Troubleshooting There are a few commands you will want to use to verify EIGRP is running correctly: Command show ip interface brief show ip route show ip route eigrp show ip eigrp neighbors Function Used to verify your interface status It is useful to see the results of EIGRP in your actual routing table This lets you view the routes that EIGRP is handling Verify that all of your neighbors are coming up and being seen. If your neighbors aren't here, don't bother troubleshooting the routes you are supposed to be transmitting because you aren't at that stage yet. This is useful to see that EIGRP traffic is being passed back and forth between neighbors. Often with EIGRP, the problems that occur are related to other things besides EIGRP Displays the topology table

show ip eigrp traffic

Show ip eigrp topology

Here are some very important Core Knowledge facts that we need to keep in mind about the EIGRP metric:

The metric formula uses the bandwidth and delay values that are set as default on the interface, or those values configured on the interface by an administrator The bandwidth value that is used in the calculation is the slowest bandwidth in the path from source to destination; to remember this just think of the weakest link in the path The delay value used in the calculation is the sum of the delay values in the path You can set the bandwidth value of an interface using the BANDWIDTH command and you can set the delay value of an interface using the DELAY command

Setting bandwidth or delay on an interface does not change any physical properties of the interface at all; you are just changing the values that the interface reports for EIGRP metric purposes

Lets examine some of this at the command line: R1#show run interface fa0/0 Building configuration...

Current configuration : 95 bytes ! interface FastEthernet0/0 ip address 10.10.10.1 255.255.255.0 duplex auto speed auto Notice that we have not set BANDWIDTH or DELAY under this interface at all. Let us examine what EIGRP will be using regarding this interface in its overall calculation: R1#show interface fa0/0 FastEthernet0/0 is up, line protocol is up Hardware is Gt96k FE, address is c201.0111.0000 (bia c201.0111.0000) Internet address is 10.10.10.1/24 MTU 1500 bytes, BW 10000 Kbit/sec, DLY 1000 usec, reliability 255/255, txload 1/255, rxload 1/255 Notice the values that EIGRP can use by default are in place. The DELAY command is a powerful command for manipulating EIGRP paths. Since the BANDWIDTH command can end up impacting a lot of other configurations (like QoS), we can use the DELAY command to manipulate EIGRP metrics (and therefore, paths) without having to touch the BANDWIDTH command. R1#conf t Enter configuration commands, one per line. End with CNTL/Z. R1(config)#interface fa0/0 R1(config-if)#delay ?

<1-16777215> Throughput delay (tens of microseconds) Notice from the above output just how easy it is to manipulate this value, and therefore, impact the EIGRP metric.