RFC 1773 (rfc1773) - Page 2 of 9

Experience with the BGP-4 protocol

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RFC 1773           Experience with the BGP-4 Protocol         March 1995


Documentation

   BGP is an inter-autonomous system routing protocol designed for
   TCP/IP internets.  Version 1 of the BGP protocol was published in RFC
   1105. Since then BGP Versions 2, 3, and 4 have been developed.
   Version 2 was documented in RFC 1163. Version 3 is documented in RFC
   1267.  The changes between versions 1, 2 and 3 are explained in
   Appendix 2 of [2].  All of the functionality that was present in the
   previous versions is present in version 4.

   BGP version 2 removed from the protocol the concept of "up", "down",
   and "horizontal" relations between autonomous systems that were
   present in version 1.  BGP version 2 introduced the concept of path
   attributes.  In addition, BGP version 2 clarified parts of the
   protocol that were "under-specified".

   BGP version 3 lifted some of the restrictions on the use of the
   NEXT_HOP path attribute, and added the BGP Identifier field to the
   BGP OPEN message.  It also clarifies the procedure for distributing
   BGP routes between the BGP speakers within an autonomous system.

   BGP version 4 redefines the (previously class-based) network layer
   reachability portion of the updates to specify prefixes of arbitrary
   length in order to represent multiple classful networks in a single
   entry as discussed in [5].  BGP version 4 has also modified the AS-
   PATH attribute so that sets of autonomous systems, as well as
   individual ASs may be described.  In addition, BGP version for has
   redescribed the INTER-AS METRIC attribute as the MULTI-EXIT
   DISCRIMINATOR and added new LOCAL-PREFERENCE and AGGREGATOR
   attributes.

   Possible applications of BGP in the Internet are documented in [3].

   The BGP protocol was developed by the IDR Working Group of the
   Internet Engineering Task Force. This Working Group has a mailing
   list, , where discussions of protocol features and
   operation are held. The IDR Working Group meets regularly during the
   quarterly Internet Engineering Task Force conferences. Reports of
   these meetings are published in the IETF's Proceedings.

MIB

   A BGP-4 Management Information Base has been published [4].  The MIB
   was written by Steve Willis (Wellfleet), John Burruss (Wellfleet),
   and John Chu (IBM).

   Apart from a few system variables, the BGP MIB is broken into two
   tables: the BGP Peer Table and the BGP Received Path Attribute Table.



Traina
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