This chapter summarizes the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) related configuration commands in the CLI command structure.
BGP is a routing protocol, which establishes routing between ISPs. ISPs use BGP to exchange routing information between Autonomous Systems (ASs) on the Internet. The routing information shared includes details, such as ASs traversed to a particular destination, reachable ASs, best paths available, network policies and rules applied on a route, etc. These details appear as BGP attributes carried in routing update packets. BGP uses this information to make routing decisions. Therefore, the primary role of a BGP system is to exchange routing information with other BGP peers.
BGP uses TCP as its transport protocol. This eliminates the need to implement explicit update fragmentation, retransmission, acknowledgement, and sequencing. BGP listens on TCP port 179. The error notification mechanism used in BGP assumes that TCP supports a graceful close (all outstanding data is delivered before the connection is closed). Routing information exchanged through BGP supports only destination-based forwarding (it assumes a router forwards packets based on the destination address carried in the IP header of the packet).
An AS is a set of routers under the same administration that use Interior Gateway Protocol (IGP) and common metrics to define how to route packets within the AS. There are two types of BGP systems: external BGP (eBGP) and internal BGP (iBGP). iBGP represents the exchange of routing information between BGP peers within an AS. Whereas, when two BGP peers, belonging to different ASs, are connected you have an eBGP setup.
BGP peers (also referred to as neighbors) are BGP enabled devices that are directly connected through an established TCP connection. When two BGP enabled peers establish a TCP connection the first time, they exchange their BGP routing tables. All subsequent route table modifications are exchanged as route updates. BGP tracks these route updates by maintaining route table version numbers. With every update the version number changes. At any given point in time, all BGP peers should have the same route table version. The peer-to-peer TCP connections are kept alive through keepalive packets exchanged at specified intervals. Errors and special events are communicated between peers as notification packets.
Note
The input parameter <HOSTNAME>, wherever used in syntaxes across this chapter, cannot include an underscore (_) character. In other words, the name of a device cannot contain an underscore.