CEF and EIGRP at the same time?

[RobBryson]

Greetings,

In a situation where there are two unequal cost paths to a remote site, and eigrp is running and correctly configured, is it necessary or even desireable to have CEF running as well? From the domumentation I've read eigrp should take the traffic share count on the interfaces and distribute packets to the interfaces according to that ratio. CEF on the other hand tries to maintain the same path for a given destination. These two scenarios would seem to be at odds with each other. I'm guessing there's something (lots probably) I don't understand.

[ruwhite]

It is desirable to run CEF at the same time... What you are thinking of when you say: "CEF tries to maintain the same path for a given destination" is the source/destination pairing used in CEF load sharing. All this does is prevent out of order packets by trying to keep each flow on the same link, but placing different flows on different links.

So, they aren't at odds with each other, and can, and should, be used together.

:-)

Russ.W