Packet Design Adds Cisco EIGRP Support To Network Analysis Tool

Packet Design Inc. today announced that it had added support for Cisco Systems' Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP) to its network route-analysis product, Route Explorer.

According to the company, the Route Explorer/EIGRP edition lets network administrators perform real-time Layer 3 analysis of networks running EIGRP, a technology that can be found in more than half of all large enterprises using Cisco gear, according to Jeff Raice, Packet Design's marketing and sales vice president.

"EIGRP is used by a significant portion of large enterprises," Raice said. Since it is a distance-vector protocol (meaning that EIGRP routers do not carry full network topology information), it's technically difficult to monitor networks using EIGRP from a single point, Raice said.

When installed in a network, Packet Design's Route Explorer box sees all the same traffic as any other router on the network, Raice said. According to Packet Design, its Route Explorer/EIGRP edition can discover all the EIGRP routers on a network, and then create a map of the network topology, and determine when and where changes occur, based on the EIGRP traffic.

"Using advanced algorithms, we can listen to the distance vector protocols and infer what the likely changes [to the network traffic] were," Raice said. Then, he said, the Route Explorer box can communicate via Telnet to routers in the area of the suspected change to validate its inferences, giving administrators a method to find network problems within the EIGRP infrastructure.Packet Design said that Router Explorer/EIGRP can also provide model numbers of the Cisco routers on a network, as well as which version of Cisco IOS each one is running. Route Explorer, the company said, can record all EIGRP routing events to a central database, which can then act as a historical log for network-problem analysis.

Route Explorer/EIGRP edition is scheduled to be available in March, priced starting at $19,000 for a single-user version supporting 20 routers. Existing Route Explorer customers can purchase a software upgrade to add the EIGRP support for $5,000.

Palo Alto, Calif.-based Packet Design Inc., which designs network appliances that perform Layer 3 analysis, was spun out last year from Packet Design LLC, the networking think-tank company founded by the longtime husband-and-wife entrepreneurial team of Judy Estrin and Bill Carrico.