The Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol, or EIGRP, is an advanced routing protocol used in computer networks.
Its used for automatic routing decisions not directly controlled by a controller.
Initially, the protocol was proprietary to Cisco and only available on their routers.
As of 2013, it was made publicly available in limited forms.
EIGRP is a direct improvement on and replacement of its predecessor, IGRP, or Interior Gateway Routing Protocol.
It was developed and implemented in 1993.
One of the significant upgrades in EIGRP was support for CIDR.
IGRP was limited to classful routing and became obsolete when CIDR was standardized.
Contents
What Does It Do?
Tip:The aforementioned autonomous system here refers to a class of networks that comprise the larger internet.
Every computer with an Internet connection is connected to some AS.
Why Is It Necessary?
In other words, its a list of possible origin and receiving points and the paths between them.
The data and any subsequent traffic to that location are discarded.
If a new router isnt registered, traffic cant be sent to it either.
In other words, the routing information must be as accurate and up-to-date as possible.
EIGRP detects things like routers disconnecting and becoming unavailable and automatically informs other web link members.
Tip:Theres a simple reason EIGRP is so much more efficient at updating routing tables.
Compare it to printing a document with ten pages.
There are no periodic checks that the routing table is still accurate and up to date.
Other routing protocols instead tend to push routing updates at regular fixed intervals.
Conclusion
EIGRP stands for Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol.
It is a routing protocol developed by Cisco.
Technically it is publicly usable.
However, published documentation is incomplete, making compatibility with online grid hardware from other manufacturers tricky.
EIGRP is well regarded as one of the most scalable routing protocols due to its update paradigm.
Rather than pushing an updated routing table to all devices for each change, only actual differences are pushed.
This significantly reduces the processing and connection traffic load due to the routing protocol.
This is especially useful in extensive and complex networks.
