Re: Pervasive BGP and routing loops.

Tony Li <tli@cisco.com> Tue, 23 May 1995 00:40 UTC

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Date: Mon, 22 May 1995 17:23:39 -0700
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From: Tony Li <tli@cisco.com>
To: rxg@proteon.com
Cc: bgp@ans.net, rxg@proteon.com
In-Reply-To: <199505222257.PAA04852@beasley.cisco.com> (rxg@proteon.com)
Subject: Re: Pervasive BGP and routing loops.

	    AS 1            AS 2
	   -----            -----
	   | 1 | -----/---- | 2 |
	   -----            -----
	    \                 /
   ----------\---------------/-----------
	      /             \      AS 3
	       \           /
	      -----      -----
	      | 4 |--/-- | 3 |
	      -----      -----
		    IBGP


   -  R1 starts advertising route to 128.185.128.0/17 
   -  Both R3 and R4 now have two paths to get to 128.185.128.0/17, and the
      best one happens to be via R4.
   -  R1 reboots with a changed policy, and starts advertising 128.185.0.0/16

So rebooting at this point should break the R1-R2 and R1-R4 TCP
connections, causing R2 and R4 to retract all of the 128.185.128.0/17
advertisements.  Thus, at best, what follows should be a transient.
In that light...

   -  During which time (when the connection to R1 is lost) R4 thinks that 
      it can get to 128.185.128.0/17  via R3.

One of two possibilities...

   -  R3 thinks it can get to 128.185.128.0/17 via R4.

But this is contradictory.  Recall that R3 can ONLY advertise the
route that it is using.  It _cannot_ advertise the R2 route and then
use the R4 route.

Tony