Passing the BSCI exam and earning your CCNP is all about knowing the details, and when it comes to EIGRP SIA routes, there are plenty of details to know.
A quick check in a search engine for “troubleshoot SIA” will bring up quite a few matches. Troubleshooting SIA routes is very challengin in that theres no one reason they occur.
View the EIGRP topology table with the show ip eigrp topology command, and youll see a code next to every successor and feasible successor. A popular misconception is that we want these routes to have an “A” next to them – so theyre active. Thats what we want, right? Active routes sound good, right?
Well, they sound good, but theyre not. If a route shows as Active in the EIGRP topology table, that means that DUAL is currently calculating that route, and its currently unusable. When a route is Passive (“P), that means its not being recalculated and its a usable route.
Generally, a route shown as Active is going to be there for a very short period of time by the time you repeat the command, hopefully that Active route has gone Passive. Sometimes that doesnt happen, though, and the route becomes SIA – Stuck In Active.
A route becomes SIA when a query goes unanswered for so long that the neighbor relationship is reset. From experience, I can tell you that troubleshooting SIA routes is more of an art form than a science, but there are four main reasons a route becomes SIA:
The link is unidirectional, so the query cant possibly be answered.
The queried routers resources are unavailable, generally due to high CPU utilization.
The queried routers memory is corrupt or otherwise unable to allow the router to answer the query.
The link between the two routers is of low quality, allowing just enough packets through to keep the neighbor relationship intact, but not good enough to allow the replies through.
To sum it up, routes generally become SIA when a neighbor either doesnt answer a query, or either the query or reply took a wrong turn somewhere. I told you it wasnt the easiest thing to troubleshoot!
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Chris Bryant, CCIE #12933, is the owner of The Bryant Advantage (www.thebryantadvantage.com), home of FREE CCNA and CCNP tutorials and daily exam questions, as well as The Ultimate CCNA and CCNP Study Packages.
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