BGP Route Reflector
Route reflectors (RR) are one method to get rid of the full-mesh of IBGP peers
in your network. The other method is BGP confederations.
The route reflector allows all IBGP speakers within your autonomous network
to learn about the available routes without introducing loops. Let me show
you an example picture:
Above we have a network with 6 IBGP routers. Using the full mesh formula
we can calculate the number of IBGP peerings:
N(N-1)/2
So that will be:
6(6-1=5) / 2 = 15 IBGP peerings.
When we use a route reflector our network could look like this:
We still have 6 routers but each router only has an IBGP peering with the
route reflector on top. When one of those IBGP routes advertises a route to
the route reflector, it will be reflected to all other IBGP routers:
This simplifies our IBGP configuration a lot but theres also a downside. What
if the route reflector crashes? Its a single point of failure when it comes to
IBGP peerings. Of course theres a solution to this, we can have multiple
route reflectors in our network. Ill give you some examples later.
The route reflector can have three type of peerings:
EBGP neighbor
IBGP client neighbor
IBGP non-client neighbor
When you configure a route reflector you have to tell the router whether the
other IBGP router is a client or non-client. A client is an IBGP router that the
route reflector will reflect routes to, the non-client is just a regular IBGP
neighbor.
When a route reflector forwards a route, there are a couple of rules:
1. A route learned from an EBGP neighbor can be forwarded to another EBGP
neighbor, a client and non-client.
2. A route learned from a client can be forwarded to another EBGP neighbor,
client and non-client.
3. A route learned from a non-client can be forwarded to another EBGP neighbor
and client, but not to a non-client.
The third rule makes sense, this is our normal IBGP split horizon behavior.
Now you have an idea what the route reflector is about, lets take a look at
some configurations.
Configuration
Well use a simple example, 3 IBGP routers with a single route reflector:
In this example we have 3 IBGP routers. With normal IBGP rules, when R2
receives a route from R1 it will not be forwarded to R3 (IBGP split horizon).
We will configure R2 as the route reflector to get around this. Lets configure
R1 and R3 first:
R1(config)#router bgp 123
R1(config-router)#neighbor 192.168.12.2 remote-as 123
R3(config)#router bgp 123
R3(config-router)#neighbor 192.168.23.2 remote-as 123
The configuration of R1 and R3 is exactly the same as a normal IBGP
peering. Only the configuration on the route reflector is special:
R2(config)#router bgp 123
R2(config-router)#neighbor 192.168.12.1 remote-as 123
R2(config-router)#neighbor 192.168.12.1 route-reflector-client
R2(config-router)#neighbor 192.168.23.3 remote-as 123
R2(config-router)#neighbor 192.168.23.3 route-reflector-client
Heres the magicwhen we configure the route reflector we have to specify
its clients. In this case, R1 and R3. In my topology I have added a loopback
interface on R1, lets advertise that in BGP to see what it looks like on R2 and
R3:
R1(config)#router bgp 123
R1(config-router)#network 1.1.1.1 mask 255.255.255.255
Thats all we have to configure. Lets use some show commands to verify our
work.
Verification
First well look at R2, see if it learned anything:
R2#show ip bgp 1.1.1.1
BGP routing table entry for 1.1.1.1/32, version 2
Paths: (1 available, best #1, table Default-IP-Routing-Table)
Flag: 0x820
Advertised to update-groups:
1
Local, (Received from a RR-client)
192.168.12.1 from 192.168.12.1 (192.168.12.1)
Origin IGP, metric 0, localpref 100, valid, internal, best
R2 shows us that this route was received from a route reflector client. Did it
advertise anything to R3? Lets find out:
R2#show ip bgp neighbors 192.168.23.3 advertised-routes
BGP table version is 2, local router ID is 192.168.23.2
Status codes: s suppressed, d damped, h history, * valid, > best, i - internal,
r RIB-failure, S Stale
Origin codes: i - IGP, e - EGP, ? - incomplete
Network
*>i1.1.1.1/32
Next Hop
192.168.12.1
Metric LocPrf Weight Path
0 100
0i
So what do we see here? Let me explain
