RFC 2796 (rfc2796) - Page 1 of 11

BGP Route Reflection - An Alternative to Full Mesh IBGP

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Network Working Group                                           T. Bates
Request for Comments: 2796                                 Cisco Systems
Updates: 1966                                                 R. Chandra
Category: Standards Track                                        E. Chen
                                                        Redback Networks
                                                              April 2000


                         BGP Route Reflection -
                    An Alternative to Full Mesh IBGP

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.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2000).  All Rights Reserved.

Abstract

   The Border Gateway Protocol [1] is an inter-autonomous system routing
   protocol designed for TCP/IP internets. Currently in the Internet BGP
   deployments are configured such that that all BGP speakers within a
   single AS must be fully meshed so that any external routing
   information must be re-distributed to all other routers within that
   AS. This represents a serious scaling problem that has been  well
   documented with several alternatives proposed [2,3].

   This document describes the use and design of a method known as
   "Route Reflection" to alleviate the the need for "full mesh" IBGP.

1.  Introduction

   Currently in the Internet, BGP deployments are configured such that
   that all BGP speakers within a single AS must be fully meshed and any
   external routing information must be re-distributed to all other
   routers within that AS.  For n BGP speakers within an AS that
   requires to maintain n*(n-1)/2 unique IBGP sessions.  This "full
   mesh" requirement clearly does not scale when there are a large
   number of IBGP speakers each exchanging a large volume of routing
   information, as is common in many of todays internet networks.





Bates, et al.               Standards Track
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