How the equal cost route behaves in terms of packet sequence?

I read both EIGRP and OSPF supports this feature, which means there exists two or more routes between two networks. Then, does it mean the IP packets would reach to the destination via different paths in a round-robin way?

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Diggs

To my understanding (someone please correct me if I'm wrong) if you have 2 (or more) equal cost routes to a given destination the router will split the traffic between the routes. The first packet sent in one direction and the second down the other and so forth...

The endpoint devices then reassemble the data based on the layer 4 TCP sequence numbers

networker050184

The default for CEF switching is per-destination load balancing though this can be reconfigured for per-packet.

johnifanx98

What is for router? Same as layer 3 switching?

networker050184

CEF switching is used in routers and L3 switches.

deth1k

EIGRP is per packet where's OSPF is per destination (per flow).

networker050184

How it is load balanced isn't determined by the routing protocol. That is implemented in the forwarding table and in almost all modern Cisco cases that is with CEF. You have to remember the separation of forwarding and data planes.