After reading over RTP this morning I decided to run up a very simple EIGRP setup in GNS3 to help visualise what is happening.  As the image above shows the setup is very straight forward. The link from R4 to R3 was set to 100mbps and R4 to R2 was set to 10mbps. This was simply to adjust the metric and move traffic over to one link and make picking the right link for tracking RTP easier.

I enjoy building test environments to help cement the concepts I read about. In this case it’;s the changes to the source and destination MAC addresses of a frame at layer 2 while it passes through each hop on the way to the final destination. To watch this process I setup wireshark between each hop. The topology was very simple, 2 hosts and 2 routers. 

During my study for my VCP5-DCV certification I found that having a home lab was a huge asset in terms of being able to get a better understanding of the subject matter. Now that I am working towards my CCNA Routing and Switch I feel this will be the case once again. My goal is use the home lab to work on labs as per the study guides I am using and also to have something productive to work on when I don’;t feel like reading through a study guide.