why we use EIGRP?
Enhance interior Gateway routing protocol was a Cisco proprietary protocol, but this premise that EIGRP is a Cisco proprietary protocol does not hold true anymore. EIGRP is suitable to use in medium to large networks. Following are some key features for help you to choosing EIGRP as your routing protocol.
- EIGRP is an advanced distance-vector protocol that but some Cisco documentation refers to EIGRP as a hybrid protocol. Because EIGRP advertises its routing table to its neighbors as distance-vector protocols do, but it uses hellos and forms neighbor relationships as link-state protocols do.
- VLSM is support by EIGRP.
- EIGRP provide the fast convergence using the DUAL algorithm and easy to configure as compare to OSPF and ISIS.
- EIGRP sends partial updates when a metric or the topology changes on the network. It does not send full routing-table updates in periodic fashion as do distance-vector protocols.
- EIGRP has an administrative distance of 90 which is lower than RIP and higher than OSPF.
- You can configure EIGRP for 255 Hops count that means you can use the EIGRP for large network.
- EIGRP metric is EIGRP cost and normally depends on bandwidth on delay but you can tune EIGRP for other metric values as well.
- In EIGRP route updates send every 90 seconds
- EIGRP can send 104 routes per routing updates
- EIGRP support authentications using this you enable the EIGRP among authorize routers.
- Equal cost load balancing is one of good feature of EIGRP but you can also enable the unequal cost load balancing.
- EIGRP send routing updates to it multicast address on 224.0.0.10
EIGRP is suitable for almost all enterprise environments, included LANs and WANs and is simple to design. The only caveat is that it is a Cisco proprietary routing protocol which cannot be used with other vendors. The use of EIGRP is preferred over RIP in all environments.
Features of EIGRP Protocol & EIGRP Job Interview Questions
Test your knowlegde about routing protocols by taking Quiz: OSPF Quiz, IPv6 Quiz, RIP Quiz, EIGRP Quiz, Networking Quiz
