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EIGRP in Cisco IOS XE Catalyst SD-WAN devices

Updated: February 6, 2026

Overview

Explains the fundamental characteristics of EIGRP and its role in reducing network flooding. Understanding these core mechanics allows you to leverage its Cisco-developed enhancements for improved performance on supported Cisco IOS XE Catalyst SD-WAN devices.

Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP) is a Cisco proprietary routing protocol that:

  • is an open-standard Interior Gateway Protocol (IGP),

  • is an enhancement to the original Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (IGRP) developed by Cisco,

  • does not fully update if there are no changes in the network, which reduces flooding activities in other IGPs.

EIGRP is supported only on Cisco IOS XE Catalyst SD-WAN devices. For more information, see Introduction to EIGRP.

Benefits of EIGRP

EIGRP provides several advantages that enhance network performance and simplify management for network administrators.

These are the key benefits of using EIGRP:

  • Increased network width: EIGRP supports an increased network width from 15 to 100 hops.

  • Fast convergence: EIGRP provides fast convergence.

  • Incremental updates: EIGRP uses incremental updates, which minimizes bandwidth consumption.

  • Protocol-independent neighbor discovery: EIGRP supports protocol-independent neighbor discovery.

  • Easy scaling: EIGRP is designed for easy scaling.

EIGRP restrictions

When implementing EIGRP, note these limitations and restrictions

  • EIGRP is not supported on the transport side network on Cisco IOS XE Catalyst SD-WAN devices.

  • EIGRP route match is not supported in Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN Controller centralized control policy.