Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol

Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP) is an advanced distance-vector routing protocol that is used on a computer network for automating routing decisions and configuration. The protocol was designed by Cisco Systems as a proprietary protocol, available only on Cisco routers. In 2013, Cisco permitted other vendors to freely implement a limited version of EIGRP with some of its associated features such as High Availability (HA), while withholding other EIGRP features such as EIGRP stub, needed for DMVPN and large-scale campus deployment. Information needed for implementation was published with informational status as RFC 7868 in 2016, which did not advance to Internet Standards Track level, and allowed Cisco to retain control of the EIGRP protocol.^[1][2]

EIGRP is used on a router to share routes with other routers within the same autonomous system. Unlike other well known routing protocols, such as RIP, EIGRP only sends incremental updates, reducing the workload on the router and the amount of data that needs to be transmitted.

EIGRP replaced the Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (IGRP) in 1993. One of the major reasons for this was the change to classless IPv4 addresses in the Internet Protocol, which IGRP could not support.