Configuring EIGRP
Configuring Advanced EIGRP Options
EIGRP Route Summarization: Automatic
• Purpose: Smaller routing tables, smaller updates
• Automatic summarization:
– On major network boundaries, subnetworks are
summarized to a single classful (major) network.
– Automatic summarization occurs by default.
EIGRP Route Summarization: Manual
Manual summarization has the following characteristics:
• Summarization is configurable on a per-interface basis in any
router within a network.
• When summarization is configured on an interface, the router
immediately creates a route pointing to null0.
– Loop-prevention mechanism
• When the last specific route of the summary goes away, the
summary is deleted.
• The minimum metric of the specific routes is used as the metric
of the summary route.
Configuring Route Summarization
(config-router)#
no auto-summary
• Turns off automatic summarization for the EIGRP process
(config-if)#
ip summary-address eigrp as-number address mask
[admin-distance]
• Creates a summary address that this interface will generate
Manually Summarizing EIGRP Routes
Router C Routing Table
RouterC#show ip route
<output omitted>
Gateway of last resort is not set
172.16.0.0/16 is variably subnetted, 3 subnets, 2 masks
D 172.16.0.0/16 is a summary, 00:00:04, Null0
D 172.16.1.0/24 [90/156160] via 10.1.1.2, 00:00:04, FastEthernet0/0
D 172.16.2.0/24 [90/20640000] via 10.2.2.2, 00:00:04, Serial0/0/1
C 192.168.4.0/24 is directly connected, Serial0/0/0
10.0.0.0/8 is variably subnetted, 3 subnets, 2 masks
C 10.2.2.0/24 is directly connected, Serial0/0/1
C 10.1.1.0/24 is directly connected, FastEthernet0/0
D 10.0.0.0/8 is a summary, 00:00:05, Null0
RouterC#
EIGRP Load Balancing
• Routes with a metric equal to the minimum metric are
installed in the routing table (equal-cost load balancing).
• There can be up to six entries in the routing table for the
same destination:
– The number of entries is configurable.
– The default is four.
– Set to 1 to disable load balancing.
EIGRP Unequal-Cost Load Balancing
Router(config-router)#
variance multiplier
• Allows the router to include routes with a metric smaller than the
multiplier value times the minimum metric route to that
destination
Variance Example
• Router E chooses router C to get to network Z, because it has
lowest FD of 20.
• With a variance of 2, router E chooses router B to get to network Z
(20 + 10 = 30) < [2 * (FD) = 40].
• Router D is never considered to get to network Z
(because 25 > 20).
Configuring WAN Links
• EIGRP supports different WAN links:
– Point-to-point links
– NBMA
• Multipoint links
• Point-to-point links
• EIGRP uses up to 50% of
bandwidth by default; this
bandwidth utilization can
be changed.
Bandwidth Utilization over WAN Interfaces
• Bandwidth utilization over point-to-point subinterfaces using
Frame Relay:
– Treats bandwidth as T1 by default
– Should manually configure bandwidth as the CIR of
the PVC
• Bandwidth utilization over multipoint Frame Relay, ATM, and
ISDN PRI:
– EIGRP uses the bandwidth on the physical interface
divided by the number of neighbors on that interface to
calculate the bandwidth attributed per neighbor.
Bandwidth Utilization over WAN Interfaces
(Cont.)
• Each PVC can have a different CIR, creating an EIGRP
packet-pacing problem.
• Multipoint interfaces:
– Convert these to point-to-point configuration or
manually configure bandwidth by multiplying the
lowest CIR by the number of PVCs.
EIGRP WAN Configuration:
Frame Relay Hub-and-Spoke Topology
• Configure each virtual Circuit as point-to-point, specify bandwidth = 1/10 of link capacity
• Increase EIGRP utilization to 50% of actual VC capacity
EIGRP WAN Configuration:
Hybrid Multipoint
• Configure lowest CIR virtual circuit as point-to-point, specify
bandwidth = CIR.
• Configure higher CIR virtual circuits as multipoint, combine CIRs.
Summary
• EIGRP performs automatic network-boundary summarization,
but administrators can disable automatic summarization and
perform manual route summarization on an interface-by-interface
basis. Summarizing routes creates smaller routing tables.
• Use the no auto-summary command to disable automatic
summarization. Use the ip summary-address eigrp command to
create a summary address.
• EIGRP performs equal-cost load balancing by default for up to
four paths (up to six paths can be supported).
• Use the variance command to configure unequal-cost load
balancing.
Summary (Cont.)
• EIGRP uses up to 50 percent of the bandwidth of an interface
by default. Because of the inherent differences in the
operational characteristics of WAN links, this default may not
be the best option for all WAN links.
• Use the ip bandwidth-percent eigrp command to configure
EIGRP bandwidth use across WAN links.