BGP Questions

If you are not sure about BGP, please read our BGP tutorial.

BGP Quick Summary: Protocol type: Path Vector Type: EGP (External Gateway Protocol) Packet Types: Open, Update, KeepAlive, Notification Administrative Distance: eBGP: 20; iBGP: 200 Transport: TCP port 179 Neighbor States: Idle -> Active -> Connect -> Open Sent -> Open Confirm -> Established 1 – Idle: the initial state of a BGP connection. In this state, the BGP speaker is waiting for a BGP start event, generally either the establishment of a TCP connection or the re-establishment of a previous connection. Once the connection is established, BGP moves to the next state. 2 – Connect: In this state, BGP is waiting for the TCP connection to be formed. If the TCP connection completes, BGP will move to the OpenSent stage; if the connection cannot complete, BGP goes to Active 3 – Active: In the Active state, the BGP speaker is attempting to initiate a TCP session with the BGP speaker it wants to peer with. If this can be done, the BGP state goes to OpenSent state. 4 – OpenSent: the BGP speaker is waiting to receive an OPEN message from the remote BGP speaker 5 – OpenConfirm: Once the BGP speaker receives the OPEN message and no error is detected, the BGP speaker sends a KEEPALIVE message to the remote BGP speaker 6 – Established: All of the neighbor negotiations are complete. You will see a number, which tells us the number of prefixes the router has received from a neighbor or peer group. Path Selection Attributes: (highest) Weight > (highest) Local Preference > Originate > (shortest) AS Path > Origin > (lowest) MED > External > IGP Cost > eBGP Peering > (highest) Router ID (Originate: prefer routes that it installed into BGP by itself over a route that another router installed in BGP) Authentication: MD5 BGP Origin codes: i – IGP (injected by “network” statement), e – EGP, ? – Incomplete AS number range: Private AS range: 64512 – 65535, Globally (unique) AS: 1 – 64511

More information about popular Path Selection Attributes
Weight Attribute: + Cisco proprietary + First attribute used in Path selection + Only used locally in a router (not be exchanged between BGP neighbors) + Higher weight is preferred	Local Preference (LocalPrf) Attribute: + Sent to all iBGP neighbor (not be exchanged between eBGP neighbors) + Used to choose the path to external BGP neighbors + Higher value is preferred + Default value is 100
MED Attribute: + Optional nontransitive attribute (nontransitive means that we can only advertise MED to routers that are one AS away) + Sent through ASes to external BGP neighbors + Lower value is preferred (it can be considered the external metric of a route) + Default value is 0

Question 1

Explanation

The BGP session may report in the following states

1 – Idle: the initial state of a BGP connection. In this state, the BGP speaker is waiting for a BGP start event, generally either the establishment of a TCP connection or the re-establishment of a previous connection. Once the connection is established, BGP moves to the next state.
2 – Connect: In this state, BGP is waiting for the TCP connection to be formed. If the TCP connection completes, BGP will move to the OpenSent stage; if the connection cannot complete, BGP goes to Active
3 – Active: In the Active state, the BGP speaker is attempting to initiate a TCP session with the BGP speaker it wants to peer with. If this can be done, the BGP state goes to OpenSent state.
4 – OpenSent: the BGP speaker is waiting to receive an OPEN message from the remote BGP speaker
5 – OpenConfirm: Once the BGP speaker receives the OPEN message and no error is detected, the BGP speaker sends a KEEPALIVE message to the remote BGP speaker
6 – Established: All of the neighbor negotiations are complete. You will see a number, which tells us the number of prefixes the router has received from a neighbor or peer group.

Question 2

Explanation

With BGP, we must advertise the correct network and subnet mask in the “network” command ( in this case network 10.1.1.0/24 on R1 and network 10.2.2.0/24 on R2). BGP is very strict in the routing advertisements. In other words, BGP only advertises the network which exists exactly in the routing table. In this case, if you put the command “network x.x.0.0 mask 255.255.0.0” or “network x.0.0.0 mask 255.0.0.0” or “network x.x.x.x mask 255.255.255.255” then BGP will not advertise anything.

It is easy to establish eBGP neighborship via the direct link. But let’s see what are required when we want to establish eBGP neighborship via their loopback interfaces. We will need two commands:
+ The command “neighbor 10.1.1.1 ebgp-multihop 2” on R1 and “neighbor 10.2.2.2 ebgp-multihop 2” on R1. This command increases the TTL value to 2 so that BGP updates can reach the BGP neighbor which is two hops away.
+ A route to the neighbor loopback interface. For example: “ip route 10.2.2.0 255.255.255.0 192.168.10.2” on R1 and “ip route 10.1.1.0 255.255.255.0 192.168.10.1” on R2

Question 3

Explanation

The ‘>’ shown in the output above indicates that the path with a next hop of 192.168.101.2 is the current best path.

Path Selection Attributes: Weight > Local Preference > Originate > AS Path > Origin > MED > External > IGP Cost > eBGP Peering > Router ID

BGP prefers the path with highest weight but the weights here are all 0 (which indicate all routes that are not originated by the local router) so we need to check the Local Preference. A path without LOCAL_PREF (LocPrf column) means it has the default value of 100. Therefore we can find the two next best paths with the next hop of 192.168.101.18 and 192.168.101.10.

We have to move to the next path selection attribute: Originate. BGP prefers the path that the local router originated (which is indicated with the “next hop 0.0.0.0”). But none of the two best paths is self-originated.

The AS Path of the next hop 192.168.101.18 (one AS away) is shorter than the AS Path of the next hop 192.168.101.10 (two ASes away) so the next hop 192.168.101.18 will be chosen as the next best path.

Question 4

Explanation

Path Selection Attributes: Weight > Local Preference > Originate > AS Path > Origin > MED > External > IGP Cost > eBGP Peering > Router ID

Question 5

Explanation

Local preference is an indication to the AS about which path has preference to exit the AS in order to reach a certain network. A path with a higher local preference is preferred. The default value for local preference is 100.

Unlike the weight attribute, which is only relevant to the local router, local preference is an attribute that routers exchange in the same AS. The local preference is set with the “bgp default local-preference value” command.

In this case, both R3 & R4 have exit links but R4 has higher local-preference so R4 will be chosen as the preferred exit point from AS 200.

(Reference: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk365/technologies_tech_note09186a00800c95bb.shtml#localpref)

Question 6

Question 7

Question 8

Explanation

R3 advertises BGP updates to R1 with multiple AS 200 so R1 believes the path to reach AS 200 via R3 is farther than R2 so R3 will choose R2 to forward traffic to AS 200.