When should you enable the EIGRP load and/or reliability metrics?
- If needed for troubleshooting
- To identity better paths when load or reliability change
- Only on core routers
- Under recommendation by Cisco
Explanation: EIGRP uses a composite metric based on five vector attributes: bandwidth (K1), load (K2), delay (K3), reliability (K4), and MTU (K5). By default, Cisco sets these coefficients so that only bandwidth and delay (K1 and K3) are used to calculate the path metric, while load and reliability (K2 and K4) are set to zero and ignored.
The sources explicitly state that Cisco does not recommend using load and reliability for metric computation. Furthermore, because EIGRP metric K-values are exchanged in hello packets, they must be consistently configured across the entire network; a mismatch will cause neighbor relationships to reset. Therefore, these values should only be changed under the recommendation of Cisco. Changing them without expert guidance can lead to inconsistent routing behavior and connectivity issues.
Related exam: Modules 8 – 13: Checkpoint Exam: Network Routing Answers (CCNP ENCOR v9)
