BGP Route Dampening

At a Glance: designed to reduce router processing load caused by unstable routes; prevents sustained routing oscillations without affecting well-behaved routes; RFC 2439: BGP Route Flap Dampening; minimizes BGP updates by suppressing unstable routes.

Route-Dampening Operation:

• EBGP route flaps = 1000 penalty points
• IBGP route flaps not dampened;
• penalty not user-configurable;
• penalty decays via exponential decay algorithm
• if penalty > suppress limit, route is dampened
• if penalty < reuse limit, dampened route is propagated
• if penalty < 1/2 reuse limit, flap history forgotten
• route is never dampened more than the maximum suppress time limit
• unreachable route with flap history is in history state (still in BGP table to retain flap history)
• penalty is applied to an individual path, not the prefix

---

Configuring Route Dampening:

router(config-router)# bgp dampening [half-life reuse suppress max-suppress-time] [route-map route-map-name]
half-life	time for penalty to halve (default 15 minutes)
reuse	penalty points when dampened route is reused (default 750)
suppress	penalty points when route is suppressed (default 2000)
max-suppress-time	maximum time a route is suppressed (default 1hour; maximum 255 minutes)

router(config-route-map)# set dampening half-life reuse suppress max-suppress-time

- used for less aggressive dampening of routes towards root DNS servers - dampening of smaller prefixes more aggressively - selective dampening based on BGP neighbors and route-map match criteria

Other Commands:

clear ip bgp ip_addr flap-statistics [{regexp regexp} | {filter-list listname} | {ipaddr mask} ]

clear ip bgp dampening [ipaddr mask]

show ip bgp dampened-paths

show ip bgp flap-statistics [{regexp regexp}|{filter-list listname}|{ipaddr mask [longer-prefix]}]

debug ip bgp dampening

BGP: Regular Expressions for AS-PATH Filtering

Symbol	Description
|	logical OR
.	match any
[x..y]	match one in range
^	match beginning of string
$	match end of string
_	match any delimiter/white space
( )	group as a single atom
*	match 0 or more instances of previous atom
?	match 0 or 1 instance of previous atom
+	match 1 or more instances of previous atom
\	escape character; if followed by a number n, points to the nth atom

Example 1: Advertise routes with empty AS-PATH (internal routes)

router bgp 123  neighbor 5.6.7.8 remote-as 387  neighbor 5.6.7.8 filter-list 1 out ! ip as-path access-list 1 permit ^$ !match "blank" atom at the "start" and "end" of string !

Example 2: Accept only default routes, preferring primary route based on AS PATH:

	AS387 (primary ISP)
	/
AS123
	\
	AS462 (backup ISP)

router bgp 123  neighbor 1.2.3.4 remote-as 462  neighbor 1.2.3.4 route-map FILTER in  neighbor 5.6.7.8 remote-as 387  neighbor 5.6.7.8 route-map FILTER in ! route-map FILTER permit 10 ! default routes from primary ISP (AS 387) accepted are preferred (larger weight)  match ip prefix-list DEFAULT_ONLY  match as-path 10  set weight 150 ! route-map FILTER permit 20 ! default routes from backup ISP are accepted, with lower preference than primary ISP routes  match ip prefix-list DEFAULT_ONLY  set weight 100 ! ip as-path access-list 10 permit _387$ ip prefix-list DEFAULT_ONLY seq 10 permit 0.0.0.0/0 !

Example 3: AS PATH Filtering with AS Path Prepending:

- customer in AS123 is performing AS-PATH pre-pending

AS123
10.0.0.1	\
	\
	AS462

router bgp 387  neighbor 10.0.0.1 remote-as 213  neighbor 10.0.0.1 filter-list 10 in ! ip as-path access-list 10 permit ^123(_123)*$ ! accepts "123", "123 123", or "123 123 123"

Example 4: AS PATH Filtering with AS Path Prepending, multiple customers:

- multiple customers performing AS PATH Prepending

Customer 1
	\
Customer 2 -	AS387
	/
Customer 3

!

router bgp 387  neighbor 10.0.0.1 remote-as 123  neighbor 10.0.0.1 filter-list 10 in  neighbor 20.0.0.1 remote-as 456  neighbor 20.0.0.1 filter-list 10 in  neighbor 30.0.0.1 remote-as 789  neighbor 30.0.0.1 filter-list 10 in ! ip as-path access-list 10 permit ^([0..9]+)(_\1)*$ ! accepts repeating instances of "123", "456", and "789" ! does not accept strings non-repeating strings (e.g. "123 123 100") !

Notes:
atom 1 = at least one instance of a number at the beginning of the string;
atom 2 = 0 or more instances of a whitespace and atom 1 until the end of the string.

BGP: Multihomed Customer to Single ISP in Primary-Backup Setup with Static Routes

Scenario:
Multihomed customer connected to a single service provider on multiple permanent links;
Customer network using OSPF; provider network using BGP; CE-PE via static routing;
Floating static routes configured as backup on both CE and PE;

Floating Static Routes in BGP:
Once active, the floating static routes will be permanently installed in BGP; static routes are locally sourced which is preferred;

• admin distance cannot be used in route-maps; hence, use communities
• tag floating static routes; tags mapped to specific communities;
• use route maps to modify the weight and/or local preference;
• default weight: 32768