Packet Design Introduces First Route Analysis System for Cisco EIGRP Networks

Enterprise Networks & Servers, Mar 2004

A route analysis system that for the first time brings routing-path visibility, monitoring and reporting to networks running Cisco's Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP), which is used on more than half of all enterprise networks today, has been introduced by Packet Design.

The new Route Explorer/EIGRP Edition gives network engineers a real-time Layer 3 topology view of their networks not previously available in complex EIGRP environments, enabling them to more quickly and effectively diagnose and troubleshoot network problems.

The addition of EIGRP capability makes the Route Explorer family the only route analysis solution to support all four major routing protocols in common use within large enterprises and service providers: EIGRP, OSPF (Open Shortest Path First), IS-IS (Intermediate System-Intermediate System) and BGP (Border Gateway Protocol).

Jeff Raice, Packet Design's vice president of marketing and sales, said, "EIGRP has enabled highly flexible network architectures and been deployed in many extremely large networks. But, unlike OSPF or IS-IS, EIGRP is a 'distance vector' protocol, which does not contain network-wide routing information. This has not only increased the complexity of EIGRP problem diagnosis and troubleshooting, but also posed a huge obstacle to developing effective management tools. Route Explorer/EIGRP Edition is the first solution to address this need, greatly enhancing the network engineer's ability to view the logical operations of EIGRP networks while simplifying network maintenance and growth."

Route Explorer/EIGRP Edition works by first discovering all EIGRP routers on the network and creating an end-to-end view of the topology. It then "listens" to the EIGRP protocol exchanges to learn when topology changes occur.

By analyzing those exchanges and mapping the information onto the network topology, it can infer the root cause of any route change or other Layer 3 event to the most likely set of routers and links. Finally the inference is validated and the source of the problem verified. Route Explorer places no significant load on the network infrastructure and easily scales to support the largest networks.

Network engineers can assess the impact of EIGRP network routing changes by simulating those changes on Route Explorer's end-to-end topology view. They can discover, for example, whether a downed link will break the only path to a given prefix because redundant routing is incorrectly configured.

Route Explorer's topology discovery also finds configuration problems such as two routers assigned the same router ID number. These problems can be corrected, often before users have even noticed them, using complementary configuration management tools such as Cisco Works. Route Explorer can then validate that the changes have produced the intended results. EIGRP network engineers can also view a list of all routers on their networks, along with model numbers and Cisco IOS (Internetwork Operating System) versions, providing a valuable, up-to-the-minute description of network assets.

Route Explorer records all EIGRP routing events to its database, using this event log to provide a historical playback feature showing the end-to-end network view at any time in the past. This helps the engineer with "post mortem" problem solving and root-cause analysis. If an EIGRP router or link goes down and causes traffic to be rerouted, for example, the network engineer not only knows immediately whether failover worked and how the traffic was rerouted, but also what routing events led up to the change.

Route Explorer lets the network engineer view an entire multi-domain routing structure as a single, seamless topology map, with complete end-to-end routing paths displayed across network domains running any of the supported protocols. Even problems that cross protocol boundaries can be pinpointed at a glance with Route Explorer.

The system comes with a set of protocol-specific data reports and proactive alerts, including a "watch list" feature that triggers an alert when there are changes to any critical routes specified by the network user.