Characteristics of BGP:

The BGP characteristics demonstrate why this protocol is best suited to exterior routing.

The key features of BGP include:

It is a path vector routing protocol.

BGP supports variable-length subnet mask (VLSM), classless interdomain routing (CIDR), and

summarization. Full routing updates are sent at the start of the session; triggered updates are sent subsequently.

It creates and maintains connections between peers, using TCP port 179. The connection is maintained by periodic keepalives. The failure to see a keepalive, an update, or receipt of a notification is the means by which

destination networks and paths to those destinations are tracked. Any change in the network results in a triggered update. The metrics used in BGP are intricate and are the source of its complexity and its strength. The

metric, referred to as attributes, allows great granularity in path selection.

The use of hierarchical addressing and the capability to manipulate traffic flow results in a

network that is designed to grow.

It has its own routing table, although it is capable of both sharing and inquiring about the

interior IP routing table. It is possible to manipulate the traffic flow by using attributes. Despite the complexity offered

in path selection using policy-based routing, the traffic is still forwarded using the hop-byhop paradigm. This means that no router can send traffic on a route that the next-hop router would not choose for itself.

One of the most distinctive characteristics of BGP is its routing updates. When you look at the BGP updates, you can see why BGP is excellent for communicating between autonomous systems. BGP works as an exterior routing protocol because the routing updates are extremely concise. BGP is not interested in communicating a full knowledge of every subnet within the organization, but only in conveying enough information to find another autonomous system. The BGP routing update takes summarization to the extreme by communicating only a list of autonomous system numbers, aggregated prefix addresses, and some policy-based routing information. However, the small amount of information that the BGP update carries is extremely important. BGP ensures the reliability of the transport carrying the updates and that the databases are synchronized. BGP can be implemented in several ways, including between autonomous systems or across an autonomous system. When you use BGP to connect autonomous systems, it acts as an Exterior Gateway Protocol (EGP) and is referred to as External BGP, or eBGP. The routing protocol can also carry this external information between eBGP speakers that are resident in the same autonomous system. This is called Interior BGP (iBGP).

BGP Terminology
BGP is designed to connect autonomous systems, not connect subnets within an autonomous system. BGP, therefore, comes with its own terms and concepts. As with other routing protocols, it is very important to understand terminology used in the protocol: 1: Attribute: Similar to a metric, these are variables that describe characteristics of the path to the destination. Once defined, the characteristics can be used to make decisions as to which path should be taken, based on the characteristic or attribute of the paths available. 2: Autonomous System: Definition for the organizational boundary. Routers share the same routing protocol within the organization. The autonomous system defines all the routers within an administrative domain, where each router has full knowledge of the subnets within the domain. If you are connecting directly to the Internet using BGP, the autonomous system number must be unique and obtained from the Internet addressing committees.

3: Internal BGP (iBGP): This is when BGP is used within an autonomous system. The routers are not required to be physical neighbors and often sit on edges of the autonomous system. iBGP is used between eBGP speakers in the same autonomous system. 4: Originator-ID: This is a BGP attribute. It is an optional nontransitive attribute that is created by the route reflector. The attribute contains the router ID of the router that originated the route in the update. The purpose of this attribute is to prevent a routing loop. If the originating router receives its own update, it ignores it. 5: Policy-based Routing: This allows the administrator to program the routing protocol by defining how traffic is routed. This is a form of static routing enforced by access lists called route maps. Policy-based routing (PBR) is protocol independent and uses route maps by creating a separate process to force routing decisions in a sophisticated way by matching and changing attributes and other criteria. 6: Route Reflector: This is the router that is configured to forward routes from other identified iBGP clients. This removes the necessity for a fully meshed iBGP network, preserving network resources. A fully meshed network has a great deal of overhead and does not scale. 7: Route Reflector Client: A client is a router that has a TCP session with its iBGP peer that is acting as a route reflector. It forwards routes to the route reflector, which propagates these on to other routers. The client does not have peer connections with other clients.

Overview of the BGP Operation:

BGP is connection-oriented. When a neighbor is seen, a TCP peering session is established and maintained. BGP probes are sent out periodically to sustain the link and maintain the session. These probes, otherwise known as keepalives, are simply the 19-byte header used in the BGP updates. Having established the session, the routing tables are exchanged and synchronized. The routers then send incremental updates only when changes occur. The update refers to a single path and the networks that can be reached via that path. Having corrected the routing table, the BGP process propagates the change to all neighbors, with a few exceptions, based on an algorithm to ensure a loop-free network.

The operation of BGP is very straightforward. Indeed, all the complexity of the protocol is delivered in only a few different message types. Four different message types are used in BGP:

Open messages Used to establish connections with peers.

Keepalives Sent periodically between peers to maintain connections and verify paths held by the router sending the keepalive. These packets are sent unreliably. If the periodic timer is set to a value of 0, this equates to infinity, and no keepalives are sent.

Update messages Contain paths to destination networks and the path attributes. Updates include routes that are no longer available or are withdrawn. There is one path per update, requiring many updates for many paths. The information contained in the update includes the path attributes such as origin, autonomous system path, neighbor, and interautonomous system metric.

NotificationUsed to inform the receiving router of errors that cause the connection to be closed.

BGP Attributes: The key to BGP is the capability to divert traffic into different directions based on criteria determined by the network architects. BGP is concerned with providing the capability to manipulate the traffic flow through the network. This is the key difference between the IGPs and BGP. BGP directs the traffic flow by using attributes. This is different from policy-based routing, which is a sophisticated method of forcing traffic down a particular path in spite of the dynamic routing decisions. The use of attributes refers to the use of variables in the selection of the best path for the dynamic routing protocol BGP. BGP uses attributes to select the best path. In essence, attributes are the metric for BGP. They also carry information on which decisions are based, hence the name attributes. The variables describe characteristics or attributes of the path to the destination. These characteristics can be used to distinguish the paths, which is policy-based routing. So, policy-based routing uses the attributes in BGP to make sophisticated decisions in path selection. The path selection is based on the attributes and their values. Because the BGP information in the updates varies in significance to the BGP network, it has been

categorized by importance. The attributes are divided into two types, well-known and optional. The well-known attributes are those attributes whose implementation is mandatory, whereas the optional ones are just thatoptional. The Four Categories of Attributes:

Category Well-known: Mandatory (required by all routers)

Description

These attributes are required and are therefore recognized by all BGP implementations.

Discretionary (required by all routers and recognized by all routers) Optional: Transitive

It is not required that these attributes be present in the update messages, but if they are present, all routers running BGP will recognize and act on the information contained.

The router might not recognize these attributes, but if this is the case, it marks the update as partial and sends the update, complete with attributes, to the next router. The attributes traverse the router unchanged, if they are not recognized. Nontransitive attributes are dropped if they fall onto a router that does not understand or recognize the attribute. These attributes will not be propagated to the BGP peers. Unrecognized nontransitive optional attributes must be quietly ignored and not passed along to other BGP peers. New transitive optional attributes might be attached to the path by the originator or by any other autonomous system in the path

Nontransitive

Route Selection Process:

BGP has many options by which to select one route over another using attributes. Now that you understand how attributes work in BGP, this section outlines the overall process of route selection. The following process illustrates the logic of the selection process:
1. If the router has a valid route to the destination, use that route. 2. If there is more than one valid route to the destination, take the route with the highest

weight (Cisco proprietary).

3. If the weights are the same, select the route with the highest local preference. 4. If the routes have the same local preference, prefer the route that originated on that

router. 5. If there are no routes that originated on the router, examine the AS_Path and select the shortest path (through the fewest autonomous systems). 6. If the AS_Path is the same, examine and choose the lowest origin code, where an internal path has a lower value than an external path, which in turn is lower than an incomplete path. 7. If the origin codes are the same and the routes originate from a common autonomous system, select the path with the lowest MED. 8. If the MED values are the same, choose an external BGP route over an internal BGP route. 9. If there is no external route, choose the path with the lowest IGP metric or cost to the next-hop router for iBGP. 10. Is one of the routes older? If so, choose the most recent route. 11. If all else fails, choose the router with the lowest BGP router ID.