Enhancement Internal Getway Routing Protocol: University of Technology/ Computer Science Department

University of technology/ computer science department
ENHANCEMENT INTERNAL GETWAY

ROUTING PROTOCOL
Prepare by: Douaa Ayad
1. EIGRP Definition:
Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP) is a Cisco protocol that runs on
Cisco routers and on some Cisco switches.
EIGRP is sometimes referred to as a hybrid routing protocol or an advanced distance-
vector protocol because it has characteristics of both distance-vector and some link-
state protocols.
2. Features:
 EIGRP doesn’t send link-state packets like OSPF does. Instead, it sends
traditional distance-vector updates that include information about networks plus
the cost of reaching them from the perspective of the advertising router.
 EIGRP has link-state characteristics as well—it synchronizes network topology
information between neighbors at startup and then sends specific updates only
when topology changes occur (bounded updates).
 EIGRP has a default hop count of 100, with a maximum of 255. In EIGRP-
speak, hop count refers to how many routers an EIGRP route update packet can
go through before it will be discarded, which limits the size of the autonomous
system (AS).
 Support for IP and IPv6 (and some other useless routed protocols) via protocol
dependent modules
 Considered classless (same as RIPv2 and OSPF)
 Support for VLSM/CIDR
 Support for summaries and dis-contiguous networks
 Efficient neighbor discovery
 Communication via Reliable Transport Protocol (RTP)
 Best path selection via Diffusing Update Algorithm (DUAL)
 Reduced bandwidth usage with bounded updates
 No broadcasts
2. Neighbor Discovery
Before EIGRP routers can exchange routes with each other, they must become
neighbors, and there are three conditions that must be met before this can happen, as
shown in Figure 19.1.
Link-state protocols often use Hello messages to establish who their neighbors are.
Hellos are also used to maintain neighbor relationships, it follows that EIGRP routers
must also continuously receive Hellos from their neighbors.
But EIGRP routers that belong to different ASs don’t automatically share routing
information and, therefore, don’t become neighbors.
This factor is really helpful operating in larger networks because it reduces the amount
of route information propagated through a specific AS.
Hellos between EIGRP routers are set to 5 seconds by default. Another timer that’s
related to the hello timer is the hold timer. The hold timer determines the amount of
time a router is willing to wait to get a Hello from a neighbor before declaring it dead.
Once a neighbor is declared dead, it’s removed from the neighbor table and all routes
that depended upon it are recalculated.
Interestingly, the hold timer configuration doesn’t determine how long a router waits
before it declares neighbors dead; it establishes how long the router will tell others to
wait before they can declare it dead.
During each EIGRP session running on a router, a neighbor table is created in which
the router stores information about all routers known to be directly connected
neighbors.
3. EIGRP terms:
Reported/advertised distance (AD): This is the metric of a remote network, as
reported by a neighbor. It’s also the routing table metric of the neighbor. The first
number is the administrative distance. In Figure 19.2, routers SF and NY are both
advertising the path to network 10.0.0.0 to the Corp router, but the cost through SF to
network 10.0.0.0 is less than NY.
Feasible distance (FD): This is the best metric among all paths to a remote network,
including the metric to the neighbor that’s advertising the remote network. The route
with the lowest FD is the route that you’ll find in the routing table because it’s
considered the best path. The metric of a feasible distance is calculated using the
metric reported by the neighbor that’s referred to as the reported or advertised distance
plus the metric to the neighbor reporting the route. In Figure 19.3, the Corp router will
have the path through router SF to network 10.0.0.0 in the routing table since its the
lowest feasible distance. It’s the lowest true cost from end to end.
Take a look at an EIGRP route that’s been injected into a routing table and find the FD
listed in the entry.
D 10.0.0.0/8 [90/2195456] via 172.16.10.2, 00:27:06,Serial0/0
First, the D means Dual, and is an EIGRP injected route and is the route used by
EIGRP to forward traffic to the 10.0.0.0 network via its neighbor, 172.16.10.2. But
that’s not what I want to focus on right now. See the [90/2195456] entry in the line?
The first number (90) is the administrative distance (AD), which is not to be confused
with advertised distance (AD), which is why a lot of people call it the reported
distance! The second number, is the feasible distance (FD), or the entire cost for this
router to get to network 10.0.0.0. To sum this up, the neighbor router sends a reported,
or advertised, distance (RD/AD) for network 10.0.0.0, and EIGRP calculates the cost
to get to that neighbor and then adds those two numbers together to get the FD, or total
cost.
Neighbor table: Each router keeps state information about adjacent neighbors. When
a newly discovered neighbor is found, its address and interface are recorded and the
information is held in the neighbor table, stored in RAM. Sequence numbers are used
to match acknowledgments with update packets.
Topology table: The topology table is populated by the neighbor table and the
Diffusing Update Algorithm (DUAL) calculates the best loop-free path to each remote
network. It contains all destinations advertised by neighboring routers, holding each
destination address and a list of neighbors that have advertised the destination. The
best path to each remote network is copied and placed in the routing table and then IP
will use this route to forward traffic to the remote network. The path copied to the
routing table is called a successor router—think “successful” to help you remember.
The path with a good, but less desirable, cost will be entered in the topology table as a
backup link and called the feasible successor.
Routing table:
Stores the routes that are currently in use to make local routing decisions. Anything in
the routing table is considered a successor route. Contains only successor routes;
Reliable Transport Protocol (RTP)

EIGRP depends on a proprietary protocol, called Reliable Transport Protocol (RTP), to
manage the communication of messages between EIGRP-speaking routers. As the
name suggests, reliability is a key concern of this protocol, so Cisco designed this
mechanism, which leverages multicasts and unicasts, to ensure that updates are
delivered quickly and that data reception is tracked accurately.
But how does this really work?
when EIGRP sends multicast traffic, it uses the Class D address 224.0.0.10, and each
EIGRP router knows who its neighbors are. For each multicast it sends out, a list is
built and maintained that includes all the neighbors who have replied. If a router
doesn’t get a reply from a neighbor via the multicast, EIGRP will then try using
unicasts to resend the same data. If there’s no reply from a neighbor after 16 unicast
attempts, that neighbor will then be declared dead. This process is often referred to as
reliable multicast.

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ENHANCEMENT INTERNAL GETWAY

Reliable Transport Protocol (RTP)

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