BGP Interview Questions and Answers:

Explain Border Gateway Protocol (BGP)?

BGP is an Exterior Gateway Routing Protocol used to communicate between more than one AS.
BGP is a Path Vector Routing Protocol. It falls under the category of EGP (Exterior Gateway
Protocol). BGP provide Route Manipulation and Can Handle Huge Routing Table.

What is Autonomous System Number?

An Autonomous System (AS) is a group of networks under a single administrative control. An AS
can be Internet Service Provider (ISP) or a large Enterprise Organization such as Banks etc.

Can Routers on different subnet become BGP neighbors?

BGP does not require neighbors to be attached to the same subnet. Instead, BGP routers use a
TCP connection between the routers to pass BGP messages allowing neighboring routers to be
on the same or different subnet.

What Port Number BGP use for connection?

BGP uses TCP port 179 for the connection.

Difference between eBGP and iBGP neighbor?

In iBGP, neighborship is formed between routers within the same AS (autonomous system)
whereas in eBGP, neighborship is formed between routers within different AS.

What Administrative Distance BGP uses for iBGP & eBGP?

AD for iBGP = 200, AD for eBGP = 20.

Explain Loop prevention mechanism in BGP?

BGP uses two mechanisms to prevent loops:-
1. When a router learns routes from an iBGP peer, that router does not advertise the same
routes to another iBGP peer.
2. By using AS_PATH - When advertising to an eBGP peer, a BGP router adds its own ASN to the
AS_PATH. If a BGP router receives an update and the route advertisement lists an AS_PATH
with its own ASN, the router ignores that route. A BGP router does not add its ASN when
advertising to an iBGP peer.

Do we need to follow the 3-way handshake process to establish BGP communication?

Yes

1|Page
What is the difference between the hard reset and soft reset in BGP?
In case of hard reset the local router brings down the neighborship, brings down the underlying
TCP connection and all the BGP table entries learned from that neighbor are removed. #clear ip
bgp * command is used for hard reset.
In case of a soft reset, the router does not bring down the BGP neighborship or the underlying
TCP connection. However, the local router resends outgoing Updates and reprocesses incoming
Updates adjusting the BGP table based on the current configuration. #clear ip bgp * soft
command is used for soft reset.

What are different BGP Message Types?

1. Open - It is Used to establish a neighbor relationship and exchange parameters, including
autonomous system number and authentication values.
2. Keepalive - It is Sent periodically to maintain the neighbor relationship. If the Keepalive
message is not received within the negotiated hold timer, then BGP neighborship will be turned
down.
3. Update - It exchanges Path Attributes and the associated prefix/length (NLRI) that use those
attributes.
4. Notification - It is Used to report BGP error. It results in a reset of neighbor relationship.

Explain various states of BGP?

1. Idle - The BGP process is either administratively down or waiting for the next retry attempt.
2. Connect - The BGP process is waiting for the TCP connection to be completed. If it is
successful, it will continue to the OpenSent state. In case it fails, it will continue to the active
state.
3. Active - BGP will try another TCP three-way handshake to establish a connection with the
remote BGP neighbor. If it is successful, it will move to the OpenSent state.
4. Opensent - The TCP connection exists, and a BGP Open message has been sent to the peer,
but the matching Open message has not yet been received from the other router.
5. Openconfirm - An Open message has been both sent to and received from the other router.
Next step is to receive a BGP Keepalive message (to confirm that all neighbor-related
parameters match) or a BGP Notification message (to learn that there is some mismatch in
neighbor parameters).
6. Established - All neighbor parameters matched, the neighbor relationship has been
established and the peers can now exchange Update messages

2|Page
Explain BGP Path Attributes?
BGP supports a wide variety of Path Attributes. BGP use these path attributes to examine the
competing BGP paths (routes) in the BGP table to choose the best path(route).
1. Next Hop - It lists the next-hop IP address used to reach a prefix. If Next hop is reachable? If
no route to reach Next Hop, the router cannot use this route.
2. Weight - It is a numeric value set by a router when receiving updates to influence the route
for a prefix. It is not advertised to any BGP peers. Bigger is preferred
3. Local Preference - It is a numeric value set and communicated within a single AS for the
purpose of choosing the best route for all routers in that AS to reach a certain network. Bigger
is preferred
4. Locally injected routes - Locally injected routes (routes injected using network command) are
better than iBGP/eBGP learned.
5. AS Path - It is the number of ASNs in the AS Path. Smaller is preferred.
6. Origin - Preferred I over E & E over? It implies that the route was injected into BGP as I (IGP),
E (EGP) or? (incomplete information).
7. Multi-Exit Discriminator (MED) - Allows an AS to tell a neighboring AS the best path to
forward packets into the first AS. Smaller is preferred.
8. Neighbor type - eBGP is preferred over iBGP.
9. IGP metric - Route with nearest IGP neighbor (lowest IGP metric) is preferred.
10. eBGP route - Oldest (longest known) route is preferred.
11. Neighbor Router ID - Lowest is preferred.
12. Neighbor IP address - Lowest is preferred.

Explain BGP Weight attribute?

The weight attribute is a Cisco proprietary attribute that is used in the path selection process
when there is more than one route to the same destination. A path with the Higher weight
value is preferred. The default value for weight is 0. The weight attribute is local to the router
and is not propagated to any BGP peers. The weight attribute is set by a router when receiving
updates influencing that one router’s route for a prefix.

Explain BGP Local preference?

Local preference is an indication to the AS about which path has a preference to exit the AS in
order to reach a certain network. A path with a higher local preference is preferred more. By
default, value for local preference is 100 and can be changed manually. Unlike the weight
attribute, which is only relevant to the local router, local preference attribute is communicated
throughout a single AS for the purpose of influencing the choice of best path to exit the AS.

Explain BGP MED?

The purpose of MED is to influence how other autonomous systems enter into your AS to reach
a certain prefix. BGP MED is an attribute which is not propagated throughout the whole
network but just to adjacent AS. The lower the MED the more the path will be preferred.

3|Page
What is Recursive Lookup?
The router looks up the BGP route and the next hop to reach a destination in the remote AS.
Then the router looks up the route to reach the next hop. In this way router has to perform
lookup twice to reach to a destination, this process is called recursive lookup.

What is route reflector and why it is required?

In BGP, route learned from an iBGP neighbor will not be advertised to another iBGP neighbor.
To overcome this situation route reflector is used. It acts as a route reflector server and makes
IBGP neighbors as route reflector clients enabling route advertisements between them. Route
Reflectors are used to eliminate the full mesh requirement and allow for building iBGP
networks that scale easily and cleanly.

What is the difference between Local Preference and MED?

The Local Preference attribute is to influence your own AS how to get or exit to another AS.
MED is to influence other AS how to enter your own AS.

What is the command to administratively disable BGP neighborship?

# neighbor neighbor-ip shutdown
# no neighbor neighbor-ip shutdown (to enable it again)

Can I run two BGP process on single router?

No, you cannot run two BGP process on a Single Router.

Define various BGP path attributes.

BGP chooses a route to a network based on the attributes of its path. Four categories of
attributes exist as follows:
Well-Known Mandatory: Must be recognized by all BGP routers, present in all BGP updates, and
passed on to other BGP routers. For example, AS path, origin, and next hop.
Well-Known Discretionary: Must be recognized by all BGP routers and passed on to other BGP
routers but need not be present in an update, for example, local preference.
Optional Transitive: Might or might not be recognized by a BGP router but is passed on to other
BGP routers. If not recognized, it is marked as partial, for example, aggregator, community.
Optional Nontransitive: Might or might not be recognized by a BGP router and is not passed on
to other routers, for example, Multi-Exit Discriminator (MED), originator ID.

What is eBGP multihop?

When eBGP peers or routers are not directly connected with each other. And there are one or
more non BGP peers to reach BGP router. You are required to configure eBGP multihop to
enables the non BGP routes to pass through the BGP neighbor relationship & exchange update-
messages.

4|Page
What is the use of confederation in BGP?
This is feature is used to split an autonomous system into smaller autonomous systems or the
reverse which is to combine several autonomous systems into one.

Which algorithm is used by BGP for best path selection?

BGP uses Composite Metric for best path selection and install the best routes into the routing
table.

BGP is which type of Routing Protocol?

BGP is a Path Vector Routing Protocol. It falls under the category of EGP (Exterior Gateway
Protocol)

What will the BGP first check to see if a prefix is accessible?

BGP will check next hop attribute to determine next hop is accessible.

What are the two methods for reducing the number of IBGP connection in a network?
These are confederation and route reflector.

What is Rule of Synchronization?

Don’t use or advertise the route learned via an iBGP neighbor to an eBGP neighbor unless and
until the same is learned via some other IGP like RIP, EIGRP, OSPF etc. This feature is off by
default in Cisco IOS software release 12.2 and later.

Can I use BGP instead of any IGP?

No, because BGP works between autonomous systems (AS) but IGP works inside of
autonomous systems.

What are the benefits of configuring BGP peer groups?

BGP peer group reduces the amount of system resources (CPU and memory) used in an update
generation. It also simplifies BGP configuration since it allows the routing table to be checked
only once, and updates to be replicated to all other in-sync peer group members.

When is command “remove private-as” in BGP used?

When the ISP forwards prefixes that it learns from the private AS, it will remove the private AS
number before it forwards the prefix to other autonomous systems. Cisco IOS routers support
the remove-private-as command to achieve this.

5|Page