EIGRP

Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol — a Cisco advanced distance-vector protocol with fast convergence.

EIGRP (Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol) is a Cisco-proprietary advanced distance-vector protocol that uses the Diffusing Update Algorithm (DUAL) to calculate loop-free paths and keep backup routes in a topology table, enabling near-instant failover when a primary path fails. It sends partial, bounded updates rather than full routing-table broadcasts, conserving bandwidth versus RIP. The exam often contrasts EIGRP with OSPF: both are interior gateway protocols with fast convergence, but OSPF is an open standard using link-state flooding, while EIGRP is Cisco-only and forms neighbor relationships over multicast 224.0.0.10. On mixed-vendor networks, choose OSPF.

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