Redistribute Static Route Into EIGRP with AD/Weight

[andym5041]

Hello All,

I am looking to redistribute a static route with a weight into an EIGRP table.  For example I used the commands:

ip route 192.168.1.0/24 172.16.1.10 200

router eigrp 100

  network 172.16.0.0/16

  redistribute static

When the static route is injected into the EIGRP table it is given a weight of 170 instead of 200.  How do I redistribute this static route and maintain the 200 weight?

Thanks for your help.

[John Blakley]

You'll need to change the distance for external routes on the routers that you want to see this route. AFAIK, you won't be able to change the AD during redistribution since this is a local thing depending on the routing protocols in use. For example, you could distribute an eigrp route, redistribute into ospf, and the AD would be different on the ospf router.

To change the distance, you would go under the routing process and configure "distance eigrp 90 200" where 90 is the internal route and 200 is the external route.

HTH,
John

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[andym5041]

Hi John,

Thanks for your reply.  I want to make sure I'm interpreting this correctly.

     -It is not possible to redistribute the distance of 200 because the EIGRP external distance will always over write it.

     -The only way to change the distance is to redistribute it into another routing protocol.

     -The only way to change the default distance settings for internal and external routes is a global eigrp setting on the router.

     distance eigrp 90 200" where 90 is the internal route and 200 is the external route.  This solution would not solve our issue.

So route redistribution of this particular static route with the distance of 200 will not work.  We would have to manually set this route on each of our WAN routers?

Thanks for your help.

[John Blakley]

  -It is not possible to redistribute the distance of 200 because the EIGRP external distance will always over write it.

This is correct. You can't set the AD from another device because it depends on the receiving protocol as to what the AD will be.

     -The only way to change the distance is to redistribute it into another routing protocol.

Not quite. To change the distance, you have to manipulate the routing protocol's internal/external AD on the local machine. When you redistribute into another routing protocol, or redistribute from anything, it will be seen as an external route. That external route will then be advertised to your neighbors, and their routing protocol will determine what AD to give it.

Here's a document to help with this:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk365/technologies_tech_note09186a0080094823.shtml#adjust

      -The only way to change the default distance settings for internal and  external routes is a global eigrp setting on the router.
      distance eigrp 90 200" where 90 is the internal route and 200 is the  external route.  This solution would not solve our issue.

It may not solve your issue, but again, you cannot set the AD by advertising an arbitrary number with it. The static route that you configured on the router with an AD of 200 only affects the static route and is called a floating route. Floating routes are used when a more preferred route is no longer in the table, and this one would be installed. For example, if you learned the same route on RouterA from EIGRP as an internal route, the route would have an AD of 90. The static route could be configured on the same router with an AD of 200 so when the EIGRP learned route falls out of the table, the less preferred static route with an AD of 200 is installed.

So  route redistribution of this particular static route with the distance  of 200 will not work.  We would have to manually set this route on each  of our WAN routers?

Yes, if you absolutely have to have the route installed in the table as AD of 200...unless you want to configure static routes on each of your routers for this static route and not advertise it in eigrp, which may well be a workable solution as well.

If the route was an internal route, you could change the distance based off of the learned neighbor's address, but you can't do that with external routes.

HTH,
John

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[Richard Burts]

I essentially agree with John that you can not redistribute the weight of the static route. But I would approach the explanation in a slightly different way. My explanation would start from the point that the weight is an attribute of the static route and that while the static route can be redistributed its attributes can not be redistributed. It would be somewhat similar to doing redistribution of an OSPF route. The OSPF route has a metric which is an attribute of the dynamic route and while the OSPF route can be redistributed its OSPF metric can not be redistributed.

I would also point out that if you were to change the AD of EIGRP extrenal to 200 that this would impact all of the EIGRP external routes and not just this one route redistributed from static.

HTH

Rick

[andym5041]

Thank you John and Rick for your explanations.  This makes sense to me now.