Introduction

Many highly skilled network engineers who are completely confident trying out new features with ISDN, Frame Relay, EIGRP, OSPF, and so forth are intimidated by the complexity of BGP. However, although advanced BGP configurations on the Internet backbone can be extremely complex, the basic setup of BGP for the majority of enterprise and small provider environments is really not that complicated.

In this chapter, we show you some of the most common configurations for forming basic BGP neighbor relationships, influencing route selection, and redistributing certain BGP routes into your IGP. This will give you the skill and confidence to properly configure BGP, even including some of the more advanced options.

This chapter does not delve into the more advanced configurations on the Internet backbone. For configurations not discussed in this chapter, an excellent resource is Cisco s Web site (www.cisco.com).

Relevant RFCs

The following bulleted items are Internet Request For Comments (RFCs) documents that describe most of the important policies and protocols concerning the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP).

• RFC 1403 BGP OSPF Interaction
• RFC 1657 Definitions of Managed Objects in BGPv4
• RFC 1745 BGPv4/IDRP for IP OSPF Interaction
• RFC 1771 A Border Gateway Protocol 4 (BGPv4)
• RFC 1772 Application of BGP in the Internet
• RFC 1965 Autonomous System Confederations for BGP
• RFC 1966 BGP Route Reflection
• RFC 1997 BGP Communities Attribute
• RFC 2283 Multiprotocol Extensions for BGP (MBGP)
• RFC 2385 Protection of BGP sessions via the TCP MD5 Signature Option
• RFC 2439 BGP Route Flap Dampening
• RFC 2545 Use of BGPv4...