BGP Overview
BGP is an exterior gateway protocol (EGP) that is used to exchange routing information among routers in different autonomous systems (ASs). BGP routing information includes the complete route to each destination. BGP uses the routing information to maintain a database of network reachability information, which it exchanges with other BGP systems. BGP uses the network reachability information to construct a graph of AS connectivity, thus allowing BGP to remove routing loops and enforce policy decisions at the AS level.
Multiprotocol BGP (MBGP) extensions enable BGP to support IP version 6 (IPv6). MBGP defines the attributes MP_REACH_NLRI and MP_UNREACH_NLRI, which are used to carry IPv6 reachability information. Network layer reachability information (NLRI) update messages carry IPv6 address prefixes of feasible routes.
BGP allows for policy-based routing. You can use routing policies to choose among multiple paths to a destination and to control the redistribution of routing information.
BGP uses TCP as its transport protocol, using port 179 for establishing connections. Running over a reliable transport protocol eliminates the need for BGP to implement update fragmentation, retransmission, acknowledgment, and sequencing.
The Junos routing protocol software supports BGP version 4. This version of BGP adds support for Classless Interdomain Routing (CIDR), which eliminates the concept of network classes. Instead of assuming which bits of an address represent the network by looking at the first octet, CIDR allows you to explicitly specify the number of bits in the network address, thus providing a means to decrease the size of the routing tables. BGP version 4 also supports aggregation of routes, including the aggregation of AS paths.
This section discusses the following topics:
Autonomous Systems
An autonomous system (AS) is a set of routers that are under a single technical administration and normally use a single interior gateway protocol and a common set of metrics to propagate routing information within the set of routers. To other ASs, an AS appears to have a single, coherent interior routing plan and presents a consistent picture of what destinations are reachable through it.
AS Paths and Attributes
The routing information that BGP systems exchange includes the complete route to each destination, as well as additional information about the route. The route to each destination is called the AS path, and the additional route information is included in path attributes. BGP uses the AS path and the path attributes to completely determine the network topology. Once BGP understands the topology, it can detect and eliminate routing loops and select among groups of routes to enforce administrative preferences and routing policy decisions.
External and Internal BGP
BGP supports two types of exchanges of routing information: exchanges between different ASs and exchanges within a single AS. When used between ASs, BGP is called external BGP (EBGP) and BGP sessions perform inter-AS routing. When used within an AS, BGP is called internal BGP (IBGP) and BGP sessions perform intra-AS routing. Figure 1 illustrates ASs, IBGP, and EBGP.
Figure 1: ASs, EBGP, and IBGP
A BGP system shares network reachability information with adjacent BGP systems, which are referred to as neighbors or peers.
BGP systems are arranged into groups. In an IBGP group, all peers in the group—called internal peers—are in the same AS. Internal peers can be anywhere in the local AS and do not have to be directly connected to each other. Internal groups use routes from an IGP to resolve forwarding addresses. They also propagate external routes among all other internal routers running IBGP, computing the next hop by taking the BGP next hop received with the route and resolving it using information from one of the interior gateway protocols.
In an EBGP group, the peers in the group—called external peers—are in different ASs and normally share a subnet. In an external group, the next hop is computed with respect to the interface that is shared between the external peer and the local router.
