Inter-domain Routing Basics

Border Gateway Protocol

Inter-domain Routing Basics

Exterior routing protocols created to:

control

the expansion of routing tables

provide a structured view of the Internet by
segregating routing domains into separate
administrations called Autonomous systems
(AS)
each AS can have an independent routing
policy

Inter-domain Routing Basics

Autonomous system (AS):

set of routers have a single routing policy running
under a single administration
could be a collection of IGPs working together to
provide interior routing

Outside world AS looks like a single entity

identified by a AS#
Routing information between ASs exchanged by
the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP)

Inter-domain Routing Basics

Inter-domain Routing Basics

Stub AS:
An AS is considered stub when it reaches
networks outside it domain via a single exit point
Stub AS is single-homed with respect to its
provider
Stub AS uses from the private pool 6541265535
Stub AS need not learn any AS-level routes
just use a default route to provider AS

Multihomed Nontransit AS
AS is multihomed if it has more than one exit
point to outside
AS can be multihomed to a single or multiple
providers
Nontransit AS does not allow transit traffic to go
through it
Transit traffic has source and destination outside
the AS
A nontransit AS would only advertise its own
routes and not routes it learned from others

Inter-domain Routing Basics

Inter-domain Routing Basics

Other ASs can force traffic through a nontransit

multihomed AS AS must filter traffic to prevent
this

Multihomed Transit AS
Allows transit traffic to pass through
BGP can be used as a pipe to exchange
BGP updates within an AS Internal BGP
(IBGP)
BGP connections between ASs called
External BGP (EBGP)
Routers running EBGP called border
routers and IBGP called transit routers

Inter-domain Routing Basics

Inter-domain Routing Basics

Inter-domain Routing Basics

Initially, all candidate routes are exchanged

Incremental updates (deltas) are sent as
network information changes
BGP message header is given below

BGP is a path vector protocol used to carry

routing information between ASs
Path refers to a sequence of AS#s indicating
the path traversed
Two BGP routers forming a transport level
connection to exchange information is called
peers

Inter-domain Routing Basics

Marker

field (16-bytes) used to

authenticate the incoming BGP message
BGP message length can be in [19-4096]
bytes
BGP message types:
OPEN:
UPDATE
NOTIFICATION
KEEPALIVE

Inter-domain Routing Basics

OPEN

message:

Inter-domain Routing Basics

NOTIFICATION

message:

opens

a connection between BGP peers

should be completed for successful BGP
operation
exchanges the following information AS# (2
byte field), hold time (maximum amount of
time in seconds that can elapse between
successive KEEPALIVE or UPDATE
message), BGP identifier, optional
parameters, optional parameter length

when

Inter-domain Routing Basics

Inter-domain Routing Basics

KEEPALIVE
these

message:

messages are exchanged between

peers to determine reachability
keepalive messages are sent at a rate that
ensures that the hold time will not expire

an error is detected after a BGP

connection is established, a BGP peer sends
a NOTIFICATION message before closing the
peer connection
administrators need to examine the
NOTIFICATION message to determine the
cause of the error

UPDATE
update

message:

messages use the following:

network layer reachability information (NLRI)

path attributes
unreachable routes
NLRI

is given using IP prefixes to be

compatible with CIDR

Inter-domain Routing Basics

Inter-domain Routing Basics

BGP

path attributes are used to keep track

of route specific information:
degree

of preference
next hop value of a route
aggregation information

NLRI network layer reachability information

Building Peer Sessions

When neighbor sessions are established during

OPEN

Building Peer Sessions

Normally external BGP routers are restricted to

be connected by the same network segment

peer routers use AS#s to determine whether they are

in the same AS or not
IBGP or EBGP is used based on this information

Building Peer Sessions

Synchronization

within an AS

Building Peer Sessions

Injecting

BGP routes into AS is costly:

BGP

must be synchronized with IGP such that

it waits until the IGP has propagated routing
information across AS before advertising
transit routes to other ASs
if advertised before, the AS may receive traffic
that cannot be routed!
when a router receives updates from an IBGP
peer it should verify the reachability using IGP
before advertising to other EBGP peers

distributing

Sources of Routing Updates

Sources of Routing Updates

Injecting information statically into BGP:

proves to be most effective in ensuring route stability
IGP routes (or aggregates) that need to be advertised
are manually defined as static routes
static routes have the disadvantage that the routes
may not accurately reflect the current state
not much of a problem for single point updates
for multiple point updates, black holes can be
created destination actually reachable but routes
are incorrect

routes from BGP into IGP results

in major overhead on internal routers
carrying all external routes into an AS is
unnecessary
internal non-BGP routers can use default exit
BGP (border or transit) routers to leave AS
this may be suboptimal

Injecting

information dynamically into

BGP:
can

be divided into purely dynamic where all

IGP routes are redistributed into BGP
semidynamic where only certain IGP routes
are injected into BGP
semidynamic allows the administrators to
choose which routes should be advertised
distributing the whole of IGP routes into BGP
can cause information leakage

Sources of Routing Updates

Dynamic

approach can lead to unstable

routes
route

dampening is used to reduce the

fluctuations

BGP Routing Process

Routing

process involves the following:

pool

of routes that the router receives from its

peer
input policy engine that filter routes or
manipulate their attributes
decision process that decides which routes
the router itself will use
output policy engine the can filter routes or
manipulate their attributes
pool of routes that are advertised to other
peers

BGP Routing Process

BGP Routing Process

Input

policy engine:

filtering

is done on different parameters such

as IP prefixes, AS_path information, and
attribute information
input policy engine also manipulates the path
attributes to influence its own decision filter
certain network numbers, give certain route a
better local preference, etc

BGP Routing Process

NEXT_HOP Attribute:
For EBGP next hop is the IP address of
the neighbor announcing the route
For IBGP sessions, for routes originated
inside the AS, the next hop is the IP
address of the neighbor that announced
the route
Routes injected in AS via EBGP, next hop
is carried unaltered

BGP Routing Process

BGP Routing Process

AS_path attribute is a mandatory attribute

sequence of AS#s a route has traversed to reach a
destination
AS originating the route adds its own AS number
when sending the route to its external BGP peers
Each AS that transmits the sequence prepends its
own AS# to the sequence originating AS will be at
the end of the sequence

BGP uses AS_path as part of the routing

updates

BGP Routing Process

If route is advertised to the AS that originated it (loop),

the AS_path attribute will contain the AS#, the AS will
reject the route

BGP Routing Process

BGP Routing Process

Private ASs:

to conserve AS numbers, InterNIC, generally does

not assign a legal AS# to customers whose policies
are extensions of providers

BGP Routing Process

Route

aggregation involves summarizing

ranges of routes into one or more CIDR
blocks
drawback

is the loss of granularity that existed

in the specific routes that form the aggregate
if AS_path information that existed in multiple
routes are lost, routing loops can be created

BGP Routing Process

BGP Routing Process

AS_path

can be manipulated to affect

interdomain routing behavior BGP
prefers shorter path over larger ones
include

dummy AS#s to increase path lengths

and influence the traffic

BGP Routing Process

Path Vectors
Route

aggregation:

BGP-4

supports supernetting to fully exploit

CIDR
Instead of representing addresses as 32-bit
numbers 9.0.0.0, 128.96.0.0, or 192.4.18.0
a prefix notation is used: 9/8 (8-bit prefix),
128.96/16 (16-bit prefix), or 192.4.18/24 (24bit prefix)
to reduce the size of the routing tables -- route
aggregation is performed

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Path Vectors
AS

T manages two class C networks

197.8.0/24

and 197.8.1/24 -- this can be

represented by a 23-bit prefix 197.8.0/23
if there are two more ASs X and Y that use T
as transit AS and they are allocated
197.8.3/24 and 197.8.4/24 respectively
Without

route aggregation, AS T
announces 3 routes to its neighbor Z
Path

1: through T, reaches 197.8.0/23

Path 2: through T, X, reaches 197.8.2/24
Path 3: through T, Y, reaches 197.8.3/24

Path Vectors
With

route aggregation

Path
What

Z wants to forward this path to one of its

neighbors, it will place its own AS # in the
front
Path:

(Sequence (Z, T), Set (X, Y))

Sequence

and set components are used

for loop detection
Rule for path aggregation:

is the path?

we

cannot just list T, loop detection need the

complete path
listing a complete path like T, X, Y is
misleading -- implies a three hop path
AS

path attribute into two components:

ordered

list -- AS sequence
unordered set -- AS set
Path: (Sequence (T), Set (X, Y))

Path Vectors
If

1: reaches 197.8.0/22

Path Vectors
Path

vectors is an important concept of

the BGP
It provides for loop-free routing in complex
topologies

sequence

components should be the

intersection of all sequences
set of components contain all the ASs
mentioned in any of the paths to aggregate
yet are not present in the aggregated
sequence

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Path Vectors

Can we use link state ideas?

by distributing to all external routers a complete map
of the Internet (aggregated of course)
let the routers compute the shortest paths
Inter Domain Policy Routing (IDPR) is based on this
idea
a problem with this approach is updating the
distributed maps
OSPF recommends 200 routers for an OSPF area
and there are definitely more than 200 ASs

Path Vectors

routing update carries a full list of ASs traversed

between source and dest -- a loop occurs if an AS is
listed twice in this list
loop prevention: external router checks whether it is
already listed on a path -- if so refuses to use it
listing the complete path (list of AS numbers) causes
the size of routing messages and memory needed for
running the protocol to increase

Internal and External Peers

An

external (border) router that learned

about a path towards a network should
update the local AS routing table

In distance vector protocol, all information about

the route to a destination is concentrated in the
metric value -- insufficient for fast loop
resolution
BGP approach:

Internal and External Peers

The AS path announced by D to C should

include X and Z
The information available to D through IGP is
that routes are available to Xs networks

this may not be enough to propagate useful BGP

update message to C

BGP establishes an internal BGP connection

will all the external routers in a AS -- connecting
the external routers in a fully connected graph
independent of the IGP

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Internal and External Peers

Maintaining

a fully connected graph is a

very heavy requirement if the number of
external (border) routers is large
Route reflectors are used to alleviate this
problem share the routes within the
domain need not have a full mesh.

Border Gateway Protocol

BGP

runs over the TCP -- delegating error

control to TCP makes BGP design simpler
Drawbacks of using TCP:
susceptible

to congestion related problems

this in turn could make the congestion even
worse when BGP is carrying routing
information needed to cure congestion
could use high priority for such datagrams to
reduce this types of problems

Border Gateway Protocol

Because

BGP uses TCP -- reliable

protocol, it can exchange data
incrementally
BGP header:
BGP protocol includes a delimitation
function that separates the byte stream
into a set of independent messages

Border Gateway Protocol

The 16-byte marker is designed for security

purposes

could be a cryptographic sum of the message and

can only be checked after complete reception

Routers supporting BGP wait for BGP

connections on port 179
a routing wanting to establish a connection first
creates a TCP connection
once connection established, OPEN message is sent

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Border Gateway Protocol

OPEN

message is used to negotiate

associations parameters

Border Gateway Protocol

Hold time -- amount of time (in seconds) used by

the keep alive procedure
Initialization could fail:
if the version is not supported by the peer
if the authentication fails
connection collision occurs when both BGP peers
attempt to set up a connection simultaneously

AS

is set to the AS of the sending router

BGP identifier is one of the IP interface
addresses of the BGP router

Hold time defines the time that may elapse

between two consecutive KEEPALIVE or
UPDATE messages

Border Gateway Protocol

BGP

Updates:
Once connection is established, BGP
stations start exchanging updates
Updates can
advertise

unfeasible routes -- routes that are

withdrawn since the last update

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