Routing Table Changes

BGP neighbors exchange full routing information when the TCP connection between neighbors is first established. When changes to the routing table are detected, the BGP routers send to their neighbors only those routes that have changed. BGP routers do not send periodic routing updates, and BGP routing updates advertise only the optimal path to a destination network.

Note

AS loop detection is done by scanning the full AS path (as specified in the AS_PATH attribute), and checking that the AS number of the local system does not appear in the AS path. By default, EBGP advertises the learned routes to the same peer to prevent additional CPU cycles on the ASA in performing loop checks and to avoid delays in the existing outgoing update tasks.

Routes learned via BGP have properties that are used to determine the best route to a destination, when multiple paths exist to a particular destination. These properties are referred to as BGP attributes and are used in the route selection process:

  • Weight—This is a Cisco-defined attribute that is local to a router. The weight attribute is not advertised to neighboring routers. If the router learns about more than one route to the same destination, the route with the highest weight is preferred.

  • Local preference—The local preference attribute is used to select an exit point from the local AS. Unlike the weight attribute, the local preference attribute is propagated throughout the local AS. If there are multiple exit points from the AS, the exit point with the highest local preference attribute is used as an exit point for a specific route.

  • Multi-exit discriminator—The multi-exit discriminator (MED) or metric attribute is used as a suggestion to an external AS regarding the preferred route into the AS that is advertising the metric. It is referred to as a suggestion because the external AS that is receiving the MEDs may also be using other BGP attributes for route selection. The route with the lower MED metric is preferred.

  • Origin—The origin attribute indicates how BGP learned about a particular route. The origin attribute can have one of three possible values and is used in route selection.

    • IGP—The route is interior to the originating AS. This value is set when the network router configuration command is used to inject the route into BGP.

    • EGP—The route is learned via the Exterior Border Gateway Protocol (EBGP).

    • Incomplete—The origin of the route is unknown or learned in some other way. An origin of incomplete occurs when a route is redistributed into BGP.

  • AS_path—When a route advertisement passes through an autonomous system, the AS number is added to an ordered list of AS numbers that the route advertisement has traversed. Only the route with the shortest AS_path list is installed in the IP routing table.

  • Next hop—The EBGP next-hop attribute is the IP address that is used to reach the advertising router. For EBGP peers, the next-hop address is the IP address of the connection between the peers. For IBGP, the EBGP next-hop address is carried into the local AS. However, when the next hop is in the same subnet as the peering address of the eBGP peer, the next hop is not modified. This behavior is referred to as the third party next hop.

    Use the next-hop-self command when redistributing VPN-advertised routes to iBGP peers to ensure that the routes are redistributed with the correct next hop IP.

  • Community—The community attribute provides a way of grouping destinations, called communities, to which routing decisions (such as acceptance, preference, and redistribution) can be applied. Route maps are used to set the community attribute. The predefined community attributes are as follows:

    • no-export—Do not advertise this route to EBGP peers.

    • no-advertise—Do not advertise this route to any peer.

    • internet—Advertise this route to the Internet community; all routers in the network belong to it.