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Border Gateway Protocol

The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is the most common exterior gateway protocol used on the Internet. It ensures packets reach their destination network regardless of current network conditions. Like RIP, BGP provides network stability by allowing routers to quickly find alternate routes if connections fail. BGP was initially created and implemented separately by Cisco, Cornell University, and IBM before being combined to allow interoperability. It works by routers exchanging update messages to share routing information and find the best paths.

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Kashif Baksh
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36 views

Border Gateway Protocol

The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is the most common exterior gateway protocol used on the Internet. It ensures packets reach their destination network regardless of current network conditions. Like RIP, BGP provides network stability by allowing routers to quickly find alternate routes if connections fail. BGP was initially created and implemented separately by Cisco, Cornell University, and IBM before being combined to allow interoperability. It works by routers exchanging update messages to share routing information and find the best paths.

Uploaded by

Kashif Baksh
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Border Gateway Protocol (BGP)

The most common Exterior Gateway Protocol protocol in use on


theInternet is the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), ensuring that packets get
to their destination network regardless of current network conditions.

Like RIP, the BGP algorithm provides great network stability, guaranteeing


that if one Internet network line goes down, BGProuters can quickly adapt to
send packets through another connection. The following subsections provide
information on how BGP was invented, how BGP works, the BGP algorithm,
and more BGP information

How BGP was invented. BGP was initially created in three different
implementations. Then, in a standard Internet approach, they were used
together to show that separate implementations of the protocol could
interoperate without problems.

 Kirk Lougheed of Cisco systems developed a proprietary version of


BGP for Cisco router equipment.

 Jeff Honig from Cornell University and Dennis Ferguson from the
University of Toronto developed a BGP version calledgated to run on
Unix computers, enabling Unix machines to become BGP routers, and
then put the code in the public domain for others to use.

 Yakov Rekhter from the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center wrote
a BGP version for the NSFNET backbone.

How BGP works. When a BGP router first comes up on the Internet, either
for the first time or after being turned off, it establishes connections with the
other BGP routers with which it directly communicates. The first thing it does
is download the entire routing table of each neighboring router. After that it
only exchanges much shorter update messages with other routers.

BGP routers send and receive update messages to indicate a change in the
preferred path to reach a computer with a given IP address. If the router
decides to update its own routing tables because this new path is better,
then it will subsequently propagate this information to all of the other
neighboring BGP routers to which it is connected, and they will in turn decide
whether to update their own tables and propagate the information further.

BGP uses the TCP/IP protocol on port 179 to establish connections. It has


strong security features, including the incorporation of a digital signature in
all communications between BGP routers.
Each BGP router contains a Routing Information Base (RIB) that contains the
routing information maintained by that router. The RIB contains three types
of information:

 Adj-RIBs-In. The unedited routing information sent by neighboring


routers.

 Loc-RIB. The actual routing information the router uses, developed


from Adj-RIBs-In.

 Adj-RIBs-Out. The information the router chooses to send to


neighboring routers.

BGP routers exchange information using four types of messages:

 Open. Used to open an initial connection with a neighboring router.

 Update. These messages do most of the work, exchanging routing


information between neighboring routers, and contain one of the
following pieces of information. 

o Withdrawn routes. The IP addresses of computers that the router


no longer can route messages to.

o Paths. A new preferred route for an IP address. This path


consists of two pieces of information -- the IP address, and the
address of the next router in the path that is used to route
messages destined for that address. 

 Notification. Used to indicate errors, such as an incorrect or


unreadable message received, and are followed by an immediate close
of the connection with the neighboring router.

 Keepalive. Each BGP router sends a 19 byte Keepalive message to


each neighboring router to let them know that it is still operational
about every 30 seconds, and no more often than every three seconds.
If any router does not receive a Keepalive message from a neighboring
router within a set amount of time, it closes its connection with that
router, and removes it from its Routing Information Base, repairing
what it perceives as damage to the network.

Routing messages are the highest precedence traffic on the Internet, and
each BGP router gives them first priority over all other traffic. This makes
sense -- if routing information can't make it through, then nothing else will.
The BGP algorithm. The BGP algorithm is run after a BGP router receives
an update message from a neighboring router, and consists of the following
three steps performed for each IP address sent from the neighbor:

 Update. If the path information for an IP address in the update


message is different from the information previously received from
that router, then the Adj-RIBs-In database is updated with the newest
information.

 Decision. If it was new information, then a decision process is run that


determines which BGP router, of all those presently recorded in the
Adj-RIBs-In database, has the best routing path for the IP address in
the update message. The algorithm is not mandated, and BGP
administrators can set local policy criteria for the decision process such
as how long it takes to communicate with each neighboring router, and
how long each neighboring router takes to communicate with the next
router in the path. If the best path chosen as a result of this decision
process is different from the one currently recorded in the Loc-RIB
database, then the database is updated.

 Propagation. If the decision process found a better path, then the Adj-
RIBs-Out database is updated as well, and the router sends out update
messages to all of its neighboring BGP routers to tell them about the
better path. Each neighboring router then runs their own BGP
algorithm in turn, decides whether or not to update their routing
databases, and then propagates any new and improved paths to
neighboring routers in turn.

One of the other important functions performed by the BGP algorithm is to


eliminate loops from routing information. For example, a routing loop would
occur when router A thinks that router B has the best path to send messages
for some computer and B thinks the best path is through C, but C thinks the
best path is back through A. If these sort of routing loops were allowed to
happen, then any message to that computer that passed through routers A,
B, or C would circulate among them forever, failing to deliver the message
and using up increasing amounts of network resources. The BGP algorithm
traps and stops any such loops.

The BGP protocol has been periodically revised, and is now at version 4.
Each version can support all earlier versions. Different BGP routers may run
different versions of BGP, so the protocol includes the following clever
method for ensuring that different versions can communicate. When one
BGP router tries to communicate for the first time with a second BGP router,
it sends it an Open message including the highest version of BGP that it
supports. If the second router cannot support that version, it sends back a
Notification message with the highest version that it can support. The first
router then opens a connection using that lower version, so that the two
routers can then communicate at the highest version of BGP they both
support.

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