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+Network Working Group                                         Y. Rekhter
+Request for Comments: 1655        T.J. Watson Research Center, IBM Corp.
+Obsoletes: 1268                                                 P. Gross
+Category: Standards Track                                            MCI
+                                                                 Editors
+                                                               July 1994
+
+
+       Application of the Border Gateway Protocol in the Internet
+
+Status of this Memo
+
+   This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the
+   Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for
+   improvements.  Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet
+   Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state
+   and status of this protocol.  Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
+
+Abstract
+
+   This document, together with its companion document, "A Border
+   Gateway Protocol 4 (BGP-4)", define an inter-autonomous system
+   routing protocol for the Internet.  "A Border Gateway Protocol 4
+   (BGP-4)" defines the BGP protocol specification, and this document
+   describes the usage of the BGP in the Internet.
+
+   Information about the progress of BGP can be monitored and/or
+   reported on the BGP mailing list (bgp@ans.net).
+
+Acknowledgements
+
+   This document was originally published as RFC 1164 in June 1990,
+   jointly authored by Jeffrey C. Honig (Cornell University), Dave Katz
+   (MERIT), Matt Mathis (PSC), Yakov Rekhter (IBM), and Jessica Yu
+   (MERIT).
+
+   The following also made key contributions to RFC 1164 -- Guy Almes
+   (ANS, then at Rice University), Kirk Lougheed (cisco Systems), Hans-
+   Werner Braun (SDSC, then at MERIT), and Sue Hares (MERIT).
+
+   We like to explicitly thank Bob Braden (ISI) for the review of the
+   previous version of this document.
+
+   This updated version of the document is the product of the IETF BGP
+   Working Group with Phill Gross (MCI) and Yakov Rekhter (IBM) as
+   editors.
+
+
+
+
+
+Rekhter & Gross                                                 [Page 1]
+
+RFC 1655                   BGP-4 Application                   July 1994
+
+
+   John Moy (Proteon) contributed Section 7 "Required set of supported
+   routing policies".
+
+   Scott Brim (Cornell University) contributed the basis for Section 8
+   "Interaction with other exterior routing protocols".
+
+   Most of the text in Section 9 was contributed by Gerry Meyer
+   (Spider).
+
+   Parts of the Introduction were taken almost verbatim from [3].
+
+   We would like to acknowledge Dan Long (NEARNET) and Tony Li (cisco
+   Systems) for their review and comments on the current version of the
+   document.
+
+1. Introduction
+
+   This memo describes the use of the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) [1]
+   in the Internet environment. BGP is an inter-Autonomous System
+   routing protocol. The network reachability information exchanged via
+   BGP provides sufficient information to detect routing loops and
+   enforce routing decisions based on performance preference and policy
+   constraints as outlined in RFC 1104 [2]. In particular, BGP exchanges
+   routing information containing full AS paths and enforces routing
+   policies based on configuration information.
+
+   As the Internet has evolved and grown over in recent years, it has
+   become painfully evident that it is soon to face several serious
+   scaling problems. These include:
+
+       - Exhaustion of the class-B network address space. One
+         fundamental cause of this problem is the lack of a network
+         class of a size which is appropriate for mid-sized
+         organization; class-C, with a maximum of 254 host addresses, is
+         too small while class-B, which allows up to 65534 addresses, is
+         too large to be densely populated.
+
+       - Growth of routing tables in Internet routers are beyond the
+         ability of current software (and people) to effectively manage.
+
+       - Eventual exhaustion of the 32-bit IP address space.
+
+   It has become clear that the first two of these problems are likely
+   to become critical within the next one to three years.  Classless
+   inter-domain routing (CIDR) attempts to deal with these problems by
+   proposing a mechanism to slow the growth of the routing table and the
+   need for allocating new IP network numbers. It does not attempt to
+   solve the third problem, which is of a more long-term nature, but
+
+
+
+Rekhter & Gross                                                 [Page 2]
+
+RFC 1655                   BGP-4 Application                   July 1994
+
+
+   instead endeavors to ease enough of the short to mid-term
+   difficulties to allow the Internet to continue to function
+   efficiently while progress is made on a longer- term solution.
+
+   BGP-4 is an extension of BGP-3 that provides support for routing
+   information aggregation and reduction based on the Classless inter-
+   domain routing architecture (CIDR) [3].  This memo describes the
+   usage of BGP-4 in the Internet.
+
+   All of the discussions in this paper are based on the assumption that
+   the Internet is a collection of arbitrarily connected Autonomous
+   Systems. That is, the Internet will be modeled as a general graph
+   whose nodes are AS's and whose edges are connections between pairs of
+   AS's.
+
+   The classic definition of an Autonomous System is a set of routers
+   under a single technical administration, using an interior gateway
+   protocol and common metrics to route packets within the AS and using
+   an exterior gateway protocol to route packets to other AS's. Since
+   this classic definition was developed, it has become common for a
+   single AS to use several interior gateway protocols and sometimes
+   several sets of metrics within an AS. The use of the term Autonomous
+   System here stresses the fact that, even when multiple IGPs and
+   metrics are used, the administration of an AS appears to other AS's
+   to have a single coherent interior routing plan and presents a
+   consistent picture of which networks are reachable through it.
+
+   AS's are assumed to be administered by a single administrative
+   entity, at least for the purposes of representation of routing
+   information to systems outside of the AS.
+
+2. BGP Topological Model
+
+   When we say that a connection exists between two AS's, we mean two
+   things:
+
+      Physical connection:  There is a shared network between the two
+      AS's, and on this shared network each AS has at least one border
+      gateway belonging to that AS. Thus the border gateway of each AS
+      can forward packets to the border gateway of the other AS without
+      resorting to Inter-AS or Intra-AS routing.
+
+      BGP connection:  There is a BGP session between BGP speakers in
+      each of the AS's, and this session communicates those routes that
+      can be used for specific networks via the advertising AS.
+      Throughout this document we place an additional restriction on the
+      BGP speakers that form the BGP connection: they must themselves
+      share the same network that their border gateways share. Thus, a
+
+
+
+Rekhter & Gross                                                 [Page 3]
+
+RFC 1655                   BGP-4 Application                   July 1994
+
+
+      BGP session between adjacent AS's requires no support from either
+      Inter-AS or Intra-AS routing. Cases that do not conform to this
+      restriction fall outside the scope of this document.
+
+   Thus, at each connection, each AS has one or more BGP speakers and
+   one or more border gateways, and these BGP speakers and border
+   gateways are all located on a shared network. Note that BGP speakers
+   do not need to be a border gateway, and vice versa. Paths announced
+   by a BGP speaker of one AS on a given connection are taken to be
+   feasible for each of the border gateways of the other AS on the same
+   shared network, i.e. indirect neighbors are allowed.
+
+   Much of the traffic carried within an AS either originates or
+   terminates at that AS (i.e., either the source IP address or the
+   destination IP address of the IP packet identifies a host on a
+   network internal to that AS).  Traffic that fits this description is
+   called "local traffic". Traffic that does not fit this description is
+   called "transit traffic". A major goal of BGP usage is to control the
+   flow of transit traffic.
+
+   Based on how a particular AS deals with transit traffic, the AS may
+   now be placed into one of the following categories:
+
+      stub AS: an AS that has only a single connection to one other AS.
+      Naturally, a stub AS only carries local traffic.
+
+      multihomed AS: an AS that has connections to more than one other
+      AS, but refuses to carry transit traffic.
+
+      transit AS: an AS that has connections to more than one other AS,
+      and is designed (under certain policy restrictions) to carry both
+      transit and local traffic.
+
+   Since a full AS path provides an efficient and straightforward way of
+   suppressing routing loops and eliminates the "count-to-infinity"
+   problem associated with some distance vector algorithms, BGP imposes
+   no topological restrictions on the interconnection of AS's.
+
+3. BGP in the Internet
+
+3.1 Topology Considerations
+
+   The overall Internet topology may be viewed as an arbitrary
+   interconnection of transit, multihomed, and stub AS's.  In order to
+   minimize the impact on the current Internet infrastructure, stub and
+   multihomed AS's need not use BGP.  These AS's may run other protocols
+   (e.g., EGP) to exchange reachability information with transit AS's.
+   Transit AS's using BGP will tag this information as having been
+
+
+
+Rekhter & Gross                                                 [Page 4]
+
+RFC 1655                   BGP-4 Application                   July 1994
+
+
+   learned by some method other than BGP. The fact that BGP need not run
+   on stub or multihomed AS's has no negative impact on the overall
+   quality of inter-AS routing for traffic that either destined to or
+   originated from the stub or multihomed AS's in question.
+
+   However, it is recommended that BGP be used for stub and multihomed
+   AS's as well. In these situations, BGP will provide an advantage in
+   bandwidth and performance over some of the currently used protocols
+   (such as EGP).  In addition, this would reduce the need for the use
+   of default routes and in better choices of Inter-AS routes for
+   multihomed AS's.
+
+3.2 Global Nature of BGP
+
+   At a global level, BGP is used to distribute routing information
+   among multiple Autonomous Systems. The information flows can be
+   represented as follows:
+
+
+                    +-------+         +-------+
+              BGP   |  BGP  |   BGP   |  BGP  |   BGP
+           ---------+       +---------+       +---------
+                    |  IGP  |         |  IGP  |
+                    +-------+         +-------+
+
+                    <-AS A-->         <--AS B->
+
+   This diagram points out that, while BGP alone carries information
+   between AS's, both BGP and an IGP may carry information across an AS.
+   Ensuring consistency of routing information between BGP and an IGP
+   within an AS is a significant issue and is discussed at length later
+   in Appendix A.
+
+3.3 BGP Neighbor Relationships
+
+   The Internet is viewed as a set of arbitrarily connected AS's. BGP
+   speakers in each AS communicate with each other to exchange network
+   reachability information based on a set of policies established
+   within each AS. Routers that communicate directly with each other via
+   BGP are known as BGP neighbors. BGP neighbors can be located within
+   the same AS or in different AS's. For the sake of discussion, BGP
+   communications with neighbors in different AS's will be referred to
+   as External BGP, and with neighbors in the same AS as Internal BGP.
+
+   There can be as many BGP speakers as deemed necessary within an AS.
+   Usually, if an AS has multiple connections to other AS's, multiple
+   BGP speakers are needed. All BGP speakers representing the same AS
+   must give a consistent image of the AS to the outside. This requires
+
+
+
+Rekhter & Gross                                                 [Page 5]
+
+RFC 1655                   BGP-4 Application                   July 1994
+
+
+   that the BGP speakers have consistent routing information among them.
+   These gateways can communicate with each other via BGP or by other
+   means. The policy constraints applied to all BGP speakers within an
+   AS must be consistent. Techniques such as using a tagged IGP (see
+   A.2.2) may be employed to detect possible inconsistencies.
+
+   In the case of External BGP, the BGP neighbors must belong to
+   different AS's, but share a common network. This common network
+   should be used to carry the BGP messages between them. The use of BGP
+   across an intervening AS invalidates the AS path information. An
+   Autonomous System number must be used with BGP to specify which
+   Autonomous System the BGP speaker belongs to.
+
+4. Requirements for Route Aggregation
+
+   A conformant BGP-4 implementation is required to have the ability to
+   specify when an aggregated route may be generated out of partial
+   routing information. For example, a BGP speaker at the border of an
+   autonomous system (or group of autonomous systems) must be able to
+   generate an aggregated route for a whole set of destination IP
+   addresses (in BGP-4 terminology such a set is called the Network
+   Layer Reachability Information or NLRI) over which it has
+   administrative control (including those addresses it has delegated),
+   even when not all of them are reachable at the same time.
+
+   A conformant implementation may provide the capability to specify
+   when an aggregated NLRI may be generated.
+
+   A conformant implementation is required to have the ability to
+   specify how NLRI may be de-aggregated.
+
+   A conformant implementation is required to support the following
+   options when dealing with overlapping routes:
+
+       - Install both the less and the more specific routes
+
+       - Install the more specific route only
+
+       - Install the less specific route only
+
+       - Install neither route
+
+   By default a BGP speaker should aggregate NLRI representing subnets
+   to the corresponding network.
+
+   Injecting NLRI representing arbitrary subnets into BGP without
+   aggregation to the corresponding network shall be controlled via
+   configuration parameters.
+
+
+
+Rekhter & Gross                                                 [Page 6]
+
+RFC 1655                   BGP-4 Application                   July 1994
+
+
+   Certain routing policies may depend on the NLRI (e.g., "research"
+   versus "commercial"). Therefore, a BGP speaker that performs route
+   aggregation should be cognizant, if possible, of potential
+   implications on routing policies when aggregating NLRI.
+
+5. Policy Making with BGP
+
+   BGP provides the capability for enforcing policies based on various
+   routing preferences and constraints. Policies are not directly
+   encoded in the protocol. Rather, policies are provided to BGP in the
+   form of configuration information.
+
+   BGP enforces policies by affecting the selection of paths from
+   multiple alternatives and by controlling the redistribution of
+   routing information.  Policies are determined by the AS
+   administration.
+
+   Routing policies are related to political, security, or economic
+   considerations. For example, if an AS is unwilling to carry traffic
+   to another AS, it can enforce a policy prohibiting this. The
+   following are examples of routing policies that can be enforced with
+   the use of BGP:
+
+     1.  A multihomed AS can refuse to act as a transit AS for other
+         AS's.  (It does so by only advertising routes to networks
+         internal to the AS.)
+
+     2.  A multihomed AS can become a transit AS for a restricted set of
+         adjacent AS's, i.e., some, but not all, AS's can use the
+         multihomed AS as a transit AS. (It does so by advertising its
+         routing information to this set of AS's.)
+
+     3.  An AS can favor or disfavor the use of certain AS's for
+         carrying transit traffic from itself.
+
+   A number of performance-related criteria can be controlled with the
+   use of BGP:
+
+     1.  An AS can minimize the number of transit AS's. (Shorter AS
+         paths can be preferred over longer ones.)
+
+     2.  The quality of transit AS's. If an AS determines that two or
+         more AS paths can be used to reach a given destination, that AS
+         can use a variety of means to decide which of the candidate AS
+         paths it will use. The quality of an AS can be measured by such
+         things as diameter, link speed, capacity, tendency to become
+         congested, and quality of operation. Information about these
+         qualities might be determined by means other than BGP.
+
+
+
+Rekhter & Gross                                                 [Page 7]
+
+RFC 1655                   BGP-4 Application                   July 1994
+
+
+     3.  Preference of internal routes over external routes.
+
+   For consistency within an AS, equal cost paths, resulting from
+   combinations of policies and/or normal route selection procedures,
+   must be resolved in a consistent fashion.
+
+   Fundamental to BGP is the rule that an AS advertises to its
+   neighboring AS's only those routes that it uses. This rule reflects
+   the "hop-by-hop" routing paradigm generally used by the current
+   Internet.
+
+6. Path Selection with BGP
+
+   One of the major tasks of a BGP speaker is to evaluate different
+   paths to a destination network from its border gateways at that
+   network, select the best one, apply appropriate policy constraints,
+   and then advertise it to all of its BGP neighbors. The key issue is
+   how different paths are evaluated and compared.  In traditional
+   distance vector protocols (e.g., RIP) there is only one metric (e.g.,
+   hop count) associated with a path. As such, comparison of different
+   paths is reduced to simply comparing two numbers. A complication in
+   Inter-AS routing arises from the lack of a universally agreed-upon
+   metric among AS's that can be used to evaluate external paths.
+   Rather, each AS may have its own set of criteria for path evaluation.
+
+   A BGP speaker builds a routing database consisting of the set of all
+   feasible paths and the list of networks reachable through each path.
+   For purposes of precise discussion, it's useful to consider the set
+   of feasible paths for a given destination network. In most cases, we
+   would expect to find only one feasible path. However, when this is
+   not the case, all feasible paths should be maintained, and their
+   maintenance speeds adaptation to the loss of the primary path. Only
+   the primary path at any given time will ever be advertised.
+
+   The path selection process can be formalized by defining a complete
+   order over the set of all feasible paths to a given destination
+   network. One way to define this complete order is to define a
+   function that maps each full AS path to a non-negative integer that
+   denotes the path's degree of preference. Path selection is then
+   reduced to applying this function to all feasible paths and choosing
+   the one with the highest degree of preference.
+
+   In actual BGP implementations, the criteria for assigning degree of
+   preferences to a path are specified as configuration information.
+
+   The process of assigning a degree of preference to a path can be
+   based on several sources of information:
+
+
+
+
+Rekhter & Gross                                                 [Page 8]
+
+RFC 1655                   BGP-4 Application                   July 1994
+
+
+     1.  Information explicitly present in the full AS path.
+
+     2.  A combination of information that can be derived from the full
+         AS path and information outside the scope of BGP (e.g., policy
+         routing constraints provided as configuration information).
+
+   Possible criteria for assigning a degree of preference to a path are:
+
+       - AS count. Paths with a smaller AS count are generally better.
+
+       - Policy considerations. BGP supports policy-based routing based
+         on the controlled distribution of routing information.  A BGP
+         speaker may be aware of some policy constraints (both within
+         and outside of its own AS) and do appropriate path selection.
+         Paths that do not comply with policy requirements are not
+         considered further.
+
+       - Presence or absence of a certain AS or AS's in the path. By
+         means of information outside the scope of BGP, an AS may know
+         some performance characteristics (e.g., bandwidth, MTU, intra-
+         AS diameter) of certain AS's and may try to avoid or prefer
+         them.
+
+       - Path origin. A path learned entirely from BGP (i.e., whose
+         endpoint is internal to the last AS on the path) is generally
+         better than one for which part of the path was learned via EGP
+         or some other means.
+
+       - AS path subsets. An AS path that is a subset of a longer AS
+         path to the same destination should be preferred over the
+         longer path.  Any problem in the shorter path (such as an
+         outage) will also be a problem in the longer path.
+
+       - Link dynamics. Stable paths should be preferred over unstable
+         ones. Note that this criterion must be used in a very careful
+         way to avoid causing unnecessary route fluctuation. Generally,
+         any criteria that depend on dynamic information might cause
+         routing instability and should be treated very carefully.
+
+7. Required set of supported routing policies
+
+   Policies are provided to BGP in the form of configuration
+   information.  This information is not directly encoded in the
+   protocol. Therefore, BGP can provide support for very complex routing
+   policies. However, it is not required that all BGP implementations
+   support such policies.
+
+
+
+
+
+Rekhter & Gross                                                 [Page 9]
+
+RFC 1655                   BGP-4 Application                   July 1994
+
+
+   We are not attempting to standardize the routing policies that must
+   be supported in every BGP implementation; we strongly encourage all
+   implementors to support the following set of routing policies:
+
+     1.  BGP implementations should allow an AS to control announcements
+         of BGP-learned routes to adjacent AS's.  Implementations should
+         also support such control with at least the granularity of a
+         single network.  Implementations should also support such
+         control with the granularity of an autonomous system, where the
+         autonomous system may be either the autonomous system that
+         originated the route, or the autonomous system that advertised
+         the route to the local system (adjacent autonomous system).
+         Care must be taken when a BGP speaker selects a new route that
+         can't be announced to a particular external peer, while the
+         previously selected route was announced to that peer.
+         Specifically, the local system must explicitly indicate to the
+         peer that the previous route is now infeasible.
+
+     2.  BGP implementations should allow an AS to prefer a particular
+         path to a destination (when more than one path is available).
+         At the minimum an implementation shall support this
+         functionality by allowing to administratively assign a degree
+         of preference to a route based solely on the IP address of the
+         neighbor the route is received from. The allowed range of the
+         assigned degree of preference shall be between 0 and 2^(31) -
+         1.
+
+     3.  BGP implementations should allow an AS to ignore routes with
+         certain AS's in the AS_PATH path attribute.  Such function can
+         be implemented by using the technique outlined in [2], and by
+         assigning "infinity" as "weights" for such AS's. The route
+         selection process must ignore routes that have "weight" equal
+         to "infinity".
+
+8. Interaction with other exterior routing protocols
+
+   The guidelines suggested in this section are consistent with the
+   guidelines presented in [3].
+
+   An AS should advertise a minimal aggregate for its internal networks
+   with respect to the amount of address space that it is actually
+   using.  This can be used by administrators of non-BGP 4 AS's to
+   determine how many routes to explode from a single aggregate.
+
+   A route that carries the ATOMIC_AGGREGATE path attribute shall not be
+   exported into either BGP-3 or EGP2, unless such an exportation can be
+   accomplished without exploding the NLRI of the route.
+
+
+
+
+Rekhter & Gross                                                [Page 10]
+
+RFC 1655                   BGP-4 Application                   July 1994
+
+
+8.1 Exchanging information with EGP2
+
+   This document suggests the following guidelines for exchanging
+   routing information between BGP-4 and EGP2.
+
+   To provide for graceful migration, a BGP speaker may participate in
+   EGP2, as well as in BGP-4. Thus, a BGP speaker may receive IP
+   reachability information by means of EGP2 as well as by means of
+   BGP-4.  The information received by EGP2 can be injected into BGP-4
+   with the ORIGIN path attribute set to 1.  Likewise,  the information
+   received via BGP-4 can be injected into EGP2 as well. In the latter
+   case, however, one needs to be aware of the potential information
+   explosion when a given IP prefix received from BGP-4 denotes a set of
+   consecutive A/B/C class networks.  Injection of BGP-4 received NLRI
+   that denotes IP subnets requires the BGP speaker to inject the
+   corresponding network into EGP2.  The local system shall provide
+   mechanisms to control the exchange of reachability information
+   between EGP2 and BGP-4.  Specifically, a conformant implementation is
+   required to support all of the following options when injecting BGP-4
+   received reachability information into EGP2:
+
+       - inject default only (0.0.0.0); no export of any other NLRI
+
+       - allow controlled deaggregation, but only of specific routes;
+         allow export of non-aggregated NLRI
+
+       - allow export of only non-aggregated NLRI
+
+   The exchange of routing information via EGP2 between a BGP speaker
+   participating in BGP-4 and a pure EGP2 speaker may occur  only at the
+   domain (autonomous system) boundaries.
+
+8.2 Exchanging information with BGP-3
+
+   This document suggests the following guidelines for exchanging
+   routing information between BGP-4 and BGP-3.
+
+   To provide for graceful migration, a BGP speaker may participate in
+   BGP-3, as well as in BGP-4. Thus, a BGP speaker may receive IP
+   reachability information by means of BGP-3, as well as by means of
+   BGP-4.
+
+   A BGP speaker may inject the information received by BGP-4 into BGP-3
+   as follows.
+
+   If an AS_PATH attribute of a BGP-4 route carries AS_SET path
+   segments, then the AS_PATH attribute of the BGP-3 route shall be
+   constructed by treating the AS_SET segments as AS_SEQUENCE segments,
+
+
+
+Rekhter & Gross                                                [Page 11]
+
+RFC 1655                   BGP-4 Application                   July 1994
+
+
+   with the resulting AS_PATH being a single AS_SEQUENCE. While this
+   procedure loses set/sequence information, it doesn't affect
+   protection for routing loops suppression, but may affect policies, if
+   the policies are based on the content or ordering of the AS_PATH
+   attribute.
+
+   While injecting BGP-4 derived NLRI into BGP-3, one needs to be aware
+   of the potential information explosion when a given IP prefix denotes
+   a set of consecutive A/B/C class networks. Injection of BGP-4 derived
+   NLRI that denotes IP subnets requires the BGP speaker to inject the
+   corresponding network into BGP-3. The local system shall provide
+   mechanisms to control the exchange of routing information between
+   BGP-3 and BGP-4.  Specifically, a conformant implementation is
+   required to support all of the following options when injecting BGP-4
+   received routing information into BGP-3:
+
+       - inject default only (0.0.0.0), no export of any other NLRI
+
+       - allow controlled deaggregation, but only of specific routes;
+         allow export of non-aggregated NLRI
+
+       - allow export of only non-aggregated NLRI
+
+   The exchange of routing information via BGP-3 between a BGP speaker
+   participating in BGP-4 and a pure BGP-3 speaker may occur  only at
+   the autonomous system boundaries. Within a single autonomous system
+   BGP conversations between all the BGP speakers of that autonomous
+   system have to be either BGP-3 or BGP-4, but not a mixture.
+
+9. Operations over Switched Virtual Circuits
+
+   When using BGP over Switched Virtual Circuit (SVC) subnetworks it may
+   be desirable to minimize traffic generated by BGP. Specifically, it
+   may be desirable to eliminate traffic associated with periodic
+   KEEPALIVE messages.  BGP includes a mechanism for operation over
+   switched virtual circuit (SVC) services which avoids keeping SVCs
+   permanently open and allows it to eliminates periodic sending of
+   KEEPALIVE messages.
+
+   This section describes how to operate without periodic KEEPALIVE
+   messages to minimise SVC usage when using an intelligent SVC circuit
+   manager.  The proposed scheme may also be used on "permanent"
+   circuits, which support a feature like link quality monitoring or
+   echo request to determine the status of link connectivity.
+
+   The mechanism described in this section is suitable only between the
+   BGP speakers that are directly connected over a common virtual
+   circuit.
+
+
+
+Rekhter & Gross                                                [Page 12]
+
+RFC 1655                   BGP-4 Application                   July 1994
+
+
+9.1 Establishing a BGP Connection
+
+   The feature is selected by specifying zero Hold Time in the OPEN
+   message.
+
+9.2 Circuit Manager Properties
+
+   The circuit manager must have sufficient functionality to be able to
+   compensate for the lack of periodic KEEPALIVE messages:
+
+       - It must be able to determine link layer unreachability in a
+         predictable finite period of a failure occurring.
+
+       - On determining unreachability it should:
+
+                - start a configurable dead timer (comparable to a
+                  typical Hold timer value).
+
+                - attempt to re-establish the Link Layer connection.
+
+       - If the dead timer expires it should:
+
+                - send an internal circuit DEAD indication to TCP.
+
+       - If the connection is re-established it should:
+
+                - cancel the dead timer.
+
+                - send an internal circuit UP indication to TCP.
+
+9.3 TCP Properties
+
+   A small modification must be made to TCP to process internal
+   notifications from the circuit manager:
+
+       - DEAD: Flush transmit queue and abort TCP connection.
+
+       - UP: Transmit any queued data or allow an outgoing TCP call to
+         proceed.
+
+9.4 Combined Properties
+
+   Some implementations may not be able to guarantee that the BGP
+   process and the circuit manager will operate as a single entity; i.e.
+   they can have a separate existence when the other has been stopped or
+   has crashed.
+
+
+
+
+
+Rekhter & Gross                                                [Page 13]
+
+RFC 1655                   BGP-4 Application                   July 1994
+
+
+   If this is the case, a periodic two-way poll between the BGP process
+   and the circuit manager should be implemented.  If the BGP process
+   discovers the circuit manager has gone away it should close all
+   relevant TCP connections.  If the circuit manager discovers the BGP
+   process has gone away it should close all its connections associated
+   with the BGP process and reject any further incoming connections.
+
+10. Conclusion
+
+   The BGP protocol provides a high degree of control and flexibility
+   for doing interdomain routing while enforcing policy and performance
+   constraints and avoiding routing loops. The guidelines presented here
+   will provide a starting point for using BGP to provide more
+   sophisticated and manageable routing in the Internet as it grows.
+
+Appendix A. The Interaction of BGP and an IGP
+
+   This section outlines methods by which BGP can exchange routing
+   information with an IGP. The methods outlined here are not proposed
+   as part of the standard BGP usage at this time.  These methods are
+   outlined for information purposes only.  Implementors may want to
+   consider these methods when importing IGP information.
+
+   This is general information that applies to any generic IGP.
+
+   Interaction between BGP and any specific IGP is outside the scope of
+   this section.  Methods for specific IGP's should be proposed in
+   separate documents.  Methods for specific IGP's could be proposed for
+   standard usage in the future.
+
+Overview
+
+   By definition, all transit AS's must be able to carry traffic which
+   originates from and/or is destined to locations outside of that AS.
+   This requires a certain degree of interaction and coordination
+   between BGP and the Interior Gateway Protocol (IGP) used by that
+   particular AS. In general, traffic originating outside of a given AS
+   is going to pass through both interior gateways (gateways that
+   support the IGP only) and border gateways (gateways that support both
+   the IGP and BGP). All interior gateways receive information about
+   external routes from one or more of the border gateways of the AS via
+   the IGP.
+
+   Depending on the mechanism used to propagate BGP information within a
+   given AS, special care must be taken to ensure consistency between
+   BGP and the IGP, since changes in state are likely to propagate at
+   different rates across the AS. There may be a time window between the
+   moment when some border gateway (A) receives new BGP routing
+
+
+
+Rekhter & Gross                                                [Page 14]
+
+RFC 1655                   BGP-4 Application                   July 1994
+
+
+   information which was originated from another border gateway (B)
+   within the same AS, and the moment the IGP within this AS is capable
+   of routing transit traffic to that border gateway (B). During that
+   time window, either incorrect routing or "black holes" can occur.
+
+   In order to minimize such routing problems, border gateway (A) should
+   not advertise a route to some exterior network X via border gateway
+   (B) to all of its BGP neighbors in other AS's until all the interior
+   gateways within the AS are ready to route traffic destined to X via
+   the correct exit border gateway (B). In other words, interior routing
+   should converge on the proper exit gateway before/advertising routes
+   via that exit gateway to other AS's.
+
+A.2 Methods for Achieving Stable Interactions
+
+   The following discussion outlines several techniques capable of
+   achieving stable interactions between BGP and the IGP within an
+   Autonomous System.
+
+A.2.1 Propagation of BGP Information via the IGP
+
+   While BGP can provide its own mechanism for carrying BGP information
+   within an AS, one can also use an IGP to transport this information,
+   as long as the IGP supports complete flooding of routing information
+   (providing the mechanism to distribute the BGP information) and one
+   pass convergence (making the mechanism effectively atomic). If an IGP
+   is used to carry BGP information, then the period of
+   desynchronization described earlier does not occur at all, since BGP
+   information propagates within the AS synchronously with the IGP, and
+   the IGP converges more or less simultaneously with the arrival of the
+   new routing information. Note that the IGP only carries BGP
+   information and should not interpret or process this information.
+
+A.2.2  Tagged Interior Gateway Protocol
+
+   Certain IGPs can tag routes exterior to an AS with the identity of
+   their exit points while propagating them within the AS. Each border
+   gateway should use identical tags for announcing exterior routing
+   information (received via BGP) both into the IGP and into Internal
+   BGP when propagating this information to other border gateways within
+   the same AS. Tags generated by a border gateway must uniquely
+   identify that particular border gateway--different border gateways
+   must use different tags.
+
+   All Border Gateways within a single AS must observe the following two
+   rules:
+
+
+
+
+
+Rekhter & Gross                                                [Page 15]
+
+RFC 1655                   BGP-4 Application                   July 1994
+
+
+     1.  Information received via Internal BGP by a border gateway A
+         declaring a network to be unreachable must immediately be
+         propagated to all of the External BGP neighbors of A.
+
+     2.  Information received via Internal BGP by a border gateway A
+         about a reachable network X cannot be propagated to any of the
+         External BGP neighbors of A unless/until A has an IGP route to
+         X and both the IGP and the BGP routing information have
+         identical tags.
+
+   These rules guarantee that no routing information is announced
+   externally unless the IGP is capable of correctly supporting it. It
+   also avoids some causes of "black holes".
+
+   One possible method for tagging BGP and IGP routes within an AS is to
+   use the IP address of the exit border gateway announcing the exterior
+   route into the AS. In this case the "gateway" field in the BGP UPDATE
+   message is used as the tag.
+
+   An alternate method for tagging BGP and IGP routes is to have BGP and
+   the IGP agree on a router ID.  In this case, the router ID is
+   available to all BGP (version 3 or higher) speakers.  Since this ID
+   is already unique it can be used directly as the tag in the IGP.
+
+A.2.3 Encapsulation
+
+   Encapsulation provides the simplest (in terms of the interaction
+   between the IGP and BGP) mechanism for carrying transit traffic
+   across the AS. In this approach, transit traffic is encapsulated
+   within an IP datagram addressed to the exit gateway. The only
+   requirement imposed on the IGP by this approach is that it should be
+   capable of supporting routing between border gateways within the same
+   AS.
+
+   The address of the exit gateway A for some exterior network X is
+   specified in the BGP identifier field of the BGP OPEN message
+   received from gateway A via Internal BGP by all other border gateways
+   within the same AS. In order to route traffic to network X, each
+   border gateway within the AS encapsulates it in datagrams addressed
+   to gateway A. Gateway A then performs decapsulation and forwards the
+   original packet to the proper gateway in another AS.
+
+   Since encapsulation does not rely on the IGP to carry exterior
+   routing information, no synchronization between BGP and the IGP is
+   required.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Rekhter & Gross                                                [Page 16]
+
+RFC 1655                   BGP-4 Application                   July 1994
+
+
+   Some means of identifying datagrams containing encapsulated IP, such
+   as an IP protocol type code, must be defined if this method is to be
+   used.
+
+   Note that, if a packet to be encapsulated has length that is very
+   close to the MTU, that packet would be fragmented at the gateway that
+   performs encapsulation.
+
+A.2.4  Pervasive BGP
+
+   If all routers in an AS are BGP speakers, then there is no need to
+   have any interaction between BGP and an IGP.  In such cases, all
+   routers in the AS already have full information of all BGP routes.
+   The IGP is then only used for routing within the AS, and no BGP
+   routes are imported into the IGP.
+
+   For routers to operate in this fashion, they must be able to perform
+   a recursive lookup in their routing table.  The first lookup will use
+   a BGP route to establish the exit router, while the second lookup
+   will determine the IGP path to the exit router.
+
+   Since the IGP carries no external information in this scenario, all
+   routers in the AS will have converged as soon as all BGP speakers
+   have new information about this route.  Since there is no need to
+   delay for the IGP to converge, an implementation may advertise these
+   routes without further delay due to the IGP.
+
+A.2.5  Other Cases
+
+   There may be AS's with IGPs which can neither carry BGP information
+   nor tag exterior routes (e.g., RIP). In addition, encapsulation may
+   be either infeasible or undesirable. In such situations, the
+   following two rules must be observed:
+
+     1.  Information received via Internal BGP by a border gateway A
+         declaring a network to be unreachable must immediately be
+         propagated to all of the External BGP neighbors of A.
+
+     2.  Information received via Internal BGP by a border gateway A
+         about a reachable network X cannot be propagated to any of the
+         External BGP neighbors of A unless A has an IGP route to X and
+         sufficient time has passed for the IGP routes to have
+         converged.
+
+   The above rules present necessary (but not sufficient) conditions for
+   propagating BGP routing information to other AS's. In contrast to
+   tagged IGPs, these rules cannot ensure that interior routes to the
+   proper exit gateways are in place before propagating the routes to
+
+
+
+Rekhter & Gross                                                [Page 17]
+
+RFC 1655                   BGP-4 Application                   July 1994
+
+
+   other AS's.
+
+   If the convergence time of an IGP is less than some small value X,
+   then the time window during which the IGP and BGP are unsynchronized
+   is less than X as well, and the whole issue can be ignored at the
+   cost of transient periods (of less than length X) of routing
+   instability. A reasonable value for X is a matter for further study,
+   but X should probably be less than one second.
+
+   If the convergence time of an IGP cannot be ignored, a different
+   approach is needed. Mechanisms and techniques which might be
+   appropriate in this situation are subjects for further study.
+
+References
+
+   [1] Rekhter, Y., and T. Li, "A Border Gateway Protocol 4 (BGP-4), RFC
+       1654, cisco Systems, T.J. Watson Research Center, IBM Corp., July
+       1994.
+
+   [2] Braun, H-W., "Models of Policy Based Routing", RFC 1104,
+       Merit/NSFNET, July 1989.
+
+   [3] Fuller, V., Li, T., Yu, J., and K. Varadhan, "Supernetting:  an
+       Address Assignment and Aggregation Strategy", RFC 1519, BARRNet,
+       cisco, MERIT, OARnet, September 1993.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Rekhter & Gross                                                [Page 18]
+
+RFC 1655                   BGP-4 Application                   July 1994
+
+
+Security Considerations
+
+   Security issues are not discussed in this memo.
+
+Authors' Addresses
+
+   Yakov Rekhter
+   T.J. Watson Research Center IBM Corporation
+   P.O. Box 218
+   Yorktown Heights, NY 10598
+
+   Phone:  (914) 945-3896
+   EMail: yakov@watson.ibm.com
+
+
+   Phill Gross
+   Director of Broadband Engineering
+   MCI Data Services Division
+   2100 Reston Parkway, Room 6001
+   Reston, VA 22091
+
+   Phone: +1 703 715 7432
+   Fax: +1 703 715 7436
+   EMail: 0006423401@mcimail.com
+
+   IETF BGP WG mailing list: bgp@ans.net
+   To be added: bgp-request@ans.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Rekhter & Gross                                                [Page 19]
+