BGP has many attributes in choosing the best path. It is like an ice cream. It has many flavors. I bought Gianduia flavor from Gelato Messina while I was preparing this topic. I think I need loads of sugar to feed my brain as this BGP topic is robust and every attribute can be well-explained if we are going to lab it.

BGP’s attributes are mainly for path manipulation and these can influence either outbound or inbound traffic. It has a systematic process that it uses to choose the best path in the network.

The first thing that BGP checks is whether the WEIGHT is configured or not. WEIGHT is Cisco Proprietary so it is obvious that it prioritizes Cisco devices which has BGP WEIGHT configured. In short, if you are using Cisco devices, WEIGHT is the first thing it checks before it goes on with the series of standard BGP attributes. Keep in mind that WEIGHT is local to the router and doesn’t pass to other routers. The higher the value is more preferred.

Next in line is the LOCAL PREFERENCE. This attribute influences the outbound routing. The higher value is preferred. Unlike WEIGHT, which has a default value of 0, LOCAL PREFERENCE has a default value of 100.

If LOCAL PREFERENCE is not configured, BGP looks for locally originated routes. As the name suggests, it is a route originated by the local router via network statement, redistribution, or aggregate statement. If you do “show ip bgp” routes with weight set to “32768” is considered as local routes. When weight is configured check for routes with next hop of “0.0.0.0.” You can also use “route-map localonly” command to get locally originated routes. It is also local to the router an not pass to other peers.

The most commonly used BGP attribute is the AS PATH. Unlike, LOCAL PREFERENCE, AS Path is a Well-Known Mandatory attribute and this attribute influences inbound routing. It should be present in every update and should be recognized by all BGP speakers. When a router running BGP session sends an update to its peer, it appends its own AS number. The shorter the AS path length is more preferred. To manipulate the incoming traffic to our preferred route, we can use the “as-path prepend” command.

Like, AS PATH, ORIGIN is also a Well-Known Mandatory attribute. In this attribute, the lowest is preferred route. IGP is lower than Exterior Gateway Protocol (EGP), and EGP is lower than INCOMPLETE. If you do “show ip bgp” you will see ORIGIN codes at the far right portion: i – IGP, e – EGP, and ? – incomplete. You will no longer see “e” in the “show ip bgp” output as it is already obsolete. The question mark “?” indicates redistribution and “i” means the network command is used to advertise the route.

Multi-exit Discriminator (MED) is an optional non-transitive BGP attribute. It is usually not used as the first five attributes are often utilized before this one. MED can influence routers in the same AS (iBGP) but not on different AS (eBGP). When a router learns a route from a peer, the MED’s value is kept and retain to its iBGP peers, but the value will be peeled off once it passed to eBGP peers. You can use the “set metric” command under the BGP router process if you are using a route-map or use the “default-metric” command. Take note that the lowest MED value is preferred over the higher MED value.

If MED is not configured, it checks whether the route is learned via iBGP or eBGP. Routes learned via eBGP is more preferred than routes learned via iBGP. If both routes are learned via eBGP then it chooses the lowest IGP value (administrative distance) to the next hop.

BGP Multipath is not considered as a tie-breaker but a determination if it can allow multiple installation of path in the routing table. The WEIGHT, LOCAL PREFERENCE, AS PATH, ORIGIN, MED value, same neighbor type (eBGP / iBGP) and IGP metric should match with the best path for it to be considered as an additional path to the destination. Be aware that if multipath is not enabled the default value is 1 which means it goes back to the BGP’s golden rule that it only chooses one best path to the destination.

The next step that BGP considers is the oldest route received. The oldest route in the routing table is preferred over the new ones. This step can be skipped if router ID is used for tie breaker and that the “bgp bestpath compare-routerid” command is used. If the command is used, the lowest router ID will be selected as the best path. If there is no manually configured router ID, the highest loopback IP is chosen and if still there is none, then the highest configured physical IP address. By the way, before you considered the highest physical IP address, it is necessary to check the route with minimum cluster list length configured. This is present in a route reflector environment. There’s more about this when we get to the route reflector topic.

Before we end this topic, let me remind you that before it goes to these 13 procedures, the first thing that BGP check is whether the next hop is reachable or not. What’s the use of all of these if the route is not reachable anyway?

• AS Path, BGP, BGP attributes, BGP multipath, BGP path selection, Border Gateway Protocol, eBGP, EGP, iBGP, IGP, Local Preference, MED, Multiexit Discriminator, Origin, route reflector, router ID, Weight
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5 comments on “BGP Path Attributes: The BGP Path Selection Process”

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• Routing
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RECENT POSTS

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• The EIGRP Packet Header

Unlike other IGPs (OSPF, EIGRP, or RIP), BGP has many metrics or attributes in choosing the best path in the network. These attributes are for path manipulation. We will check it one by one as those attributes influence either inbound or outbound traffic.

BGP is further classified into two: eBGP and iBGP. When peers that run BGP within the same AS, it is called iBGP (Internal Border Gateway Protocol) and peers that run BGP session in different AS, it is called eBGP (External Border Gateway Protocol). The iBGP and eBGP differ on how routes are propagated in other peers. Routes learned from an iBGP peer will never be learned or advertised to another iBGP peer because of a “Split Horizon Rule.” In order for a route to be learned from an iBGP neighbor, it must be first known via IGP. This is called the “Synchronization Rule.” This will be later explained as we progress to Split Horizon Rule solutions.

BGP is the slowest routing protocol but being the slowest makes it a perfect routing protocol on the internet. The 3 minute convergence time is designed that way in order to prevent constant link flap. Now, you might be thinking why do we have to use BGP. Aside from the fact that it is a slow protocol, EIGRP and OSPF can also do the routing of the traffic to the internet. I think the better question here is when to use BGP. It doesn’t make sense if we are going to use BGP if we have only one or a single connection to the ISP. There is only one exit path so a default route can do the job. This is called a single-homed connection. But what if we have a dual multihomed design, which means dual connections (dual links) to two different ISPs, then BGP is far more useful than IGP. BGP attributes can be configured to better manipulate the path to the destination.

BGP RELATED TOPICS:

1. BGP Path Attributes Types
2. AS Number Range
3. BGP Neighbor States
4. BGP Message Types
5. BGP Attributes
6. BGP Next-Hop-Self
7. BGP Communities
8. BGP Multipath
9. BGP Route Reflector

BGP CONFIGURATION / LABS

1. Basic BGP Configuration
2. Configuring iBGP and eBGP
3. BGP Confederation
4. eBGP Multihop
5. Redistributing OSPF into BGP
6. BGP AS Path Attribute
7. BGP Local Preference
8. BGP MED
9. BGP Authentication

So what are IGP and EGP?

IGP is composed of routing protocols that are used within the autonomous system while EGP is used between different autonomous system. IGP usually runs within the LAN while EGP mostly used in WAN. EGP is the protocol run by ISPs to connect to customer’s edge device and protocol used by the internet. It is used to interconnect different autonomous system.

Interior Gateway Protocols:

1. Routing Information Protocol (RIP)
2. Open Shortest Path First (OSPF)
3. Enhanced Interior Gateway Routing Protocol (EIGRP)
4. Intermediate System to Intermediate System (IS-IS)

Exterior Gateway Protocol:

1. Border Gateway Protocol (BGP)

Believe me, if you missed it, you’ll get to know it on the other day.