EIGRP to go multivendor

I know this may be old news for some people, but just learned about this from a friend today.

Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP) Informational RFC Frequently Asked Questions - Cisco

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Comments

J_86

"..allows Cisco to retain control of the EIGRP protocol in order to preserve the customer experience and deployment investments."

I don't know that I trust them

. Does anyone know if any other vendors actually support EIGRP?

Heero

A couple problems here. First, they are only releasing it as an informational RFC. Cisco retains 100% control to change the specifications. Second, my understanding is that they are only releasing the RFC for the basic features and they are leaving out some more advanced features.

OSPF will still be king in the enterprise world.

xnx

EIGRP will always be a Cisco protocol, what they've done is shared the cake but left off the icing...

darkerz

EIGRP is pretty good if you have a gun held to your head

Let's just put everything on Open Flow in the Cloud. No protocols for anyone!

OfWolfAndMan

A couple problems here. First, they are only releasing it as an informational RFC. Cisco retains 100% control to change the specifications. Second, my understanding is that they are only releasing the RFC for the basic features and they are leaving out some more advanced features.

You're right. I expected that. It may only be, but it's a start.

EIGRP is pretty good if you have a gun held to your head

Let's just put everything on Open Flow in the Cloud. No protocols for anyone!

Haha! I am curious: What is this OpenFlow you speak of, fellow Washingtonian (That is my native land)?

puertorico1985

Look up SDN - software defined networking. Learn what that is, and OpenFlow will make much more sense to you. Basically, it allows people to write software to manipulate network traffic.

it_consultant

darkerz wrote: »

EIGRP is pretty good if you have a gun held to your head

Let's just put everything on Open Flow in the Cloud. No protocols for anyone!

Open flow is a software that will replace your traditional routing and switching protocols by pathing network traffic using whatever algorithms open flow programmers decide. Some Brocade and Avaya switches already support ports running in open flow (SDN) mode.

fredrikjj

it_consultant wrote: »

Open flow is a software that will replace your traditional routing and switching protocols by pathing network traffic using whatever algorithms open flow programmers decide. Some Brocade and Avaya switches already support ports running in open flow (SDN) mode.

How will you get reachability between the controller and the network elements if you don't use traditional protocols? What will you fall back to if your controller fails?

it_consultant

fredrikjj wrote: »

How will you get reachability between the controller and the network elements if you don't use traditional protocols? What will you fall back to if your controller fails?

The switch can run autonomously if it loses contact with the controller with whatever the last known configuration is/was. You are not getting rid of software on the switch itself, that would be stupid, the software will just operate differently than what we are used to. That is really what software developers are talking about when they say "control plane". We imagine this must be the switch firmware and we shudder when we think about the possibility of moving that to a server. That isn't the whole story, the switch will run some sort of linux and the controller will communicate to that linux instance with the information it needs to operate on the fabric. Sort of like a cloud managed access point, if the controller goes away, it will operate with the last set of instructions it has.