RFC 1997 (rfc1997) - Page 1 of 5

BGP Communities Attribute

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Network Working Group                                         R. Chandra
Request for Comments: 1997                                     P. Traina
Category: Standards Track                                  cisco Systems
                                                                   T. Li
                                                             August 1996


                       BGP Communities Attribute

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

   Border Gateway Protocol [1] is an inter-autonomous system routing
   protocol designed for TCP/IP internets.

   This document describes an extension to BGP which may be used to pass
   additional information to both neighboring and remote BGP peers.

   The intention of the proposed technique is to aid in policy
   administration and reduce the management complexity of maintaining
   the Internet.

Introduction

   BGP supports transit policies via controlled distribution of routing
   information.  Mechanisms for this are described in [1] and have been
   successfully used by transit service providers.  However, control
   over the distribution of routing information is presently based on
   either IP address prefixes or on the value of the AS_PATH attribute
   (or part of it).

   To facilitate and simplify the control of routing information this
   document suggests a grouping of destinations so that the routing
   decision can also be based on the identity of a group.  Such a scheme
   is expected to significantly simplify a BGP speaker's configuration
   that controls distribution of routing information.








Chandra, et. al.            Standards Track
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