Multiprotocol Extensions for BGP-4
RFC 2283
Document | Type |
RFC - Proposed Standard
(February 1998; No errata)
Obsoleted by RFC 2858
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Authors | Yakov Rekhter , Tony Bates , Ravi Chandra , Dave Katz | ||
Last updated | 2013-03-02 | ||
Stream | Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) | ||
Formats | plain text html pdf htmlized (tools) htmlized bibtex | ||
Stream | WG state | (None) | |
Document shepherd | No shepherd assigned | ||
IESG | IESG state | RFC 2283 (Proposed Standard) | |
Consensus Boilerplate | Unknown | ||
Telechat date | |||
Responsible AD | (None) | ||
Send notices to | (None) |
Network Working Group T. Bates Request for Comments: 2283 Cisco Systems Category: Standards Track R. Chandra Cisco Systems D. Katz Juniper Networks Y. Rekhter Cisco Systems February 1998 Multiprotocol Extensions for BGP-4 Status of this Memo This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements. Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state and status of this protocol. Distribution of this memo is unlimited. Copyright Notice Copyright (C) The Internet Society (1998). All Rights Reserved. 2. Abstract Currently BGP-4 [BGP-4] is capable of carrying routing information only for IPv4 [IPv4]. This document defines extensions to BGP-4 to enable it to carry routing information for multiple Network Layer protocols (e.g., IPv6, IPX, etc...). The extensions are backward compatible - a router that supports the extensions can interoperate with a router that doesn't support the extensions. 3. Overview The only three pieces of information carried by BGP-4 that are IPv4 specific are (a) the NEXT_HOP attribute (expressed as an IPv4 address), (b) AGGREGATOR (contains an IPv4 address), and (c) NLRI (expressed as IPv4 address prefixes). This document assumes that any BGP speaker (including the one that supports multiprotocol capabilities defined in this document) has to have an IPv4 address (which will be used, among other things, in the AGGREGATOR attribute). Therefore, to enable BGP-4 to support routing for multiple Network Layer protocols the only two things that have to be added to BGP-4 are (a) the ability to associate a particular Network Layer protocol with the next hop information, and (b) the ability to associated a particular Network Layer protocol with NLRI. To identify Bates, et. al. Standards Track [Page 1] RFC 2283 Multiprotocol Extensions for BGP-4 February 1998 individual Network Layer protocols this document uses Address Family, as defined in [RFC1700]. One could further observe that the next hop information (the information provided by the NEXT_HOP attribute) is meaningful (and necessary) only in conjunction with the advertisements of reachable destinations - in conjunction with the advertisements of unreachable destinations (withdrawing routes from service) the next hop information is meaningless. This suggests that the advertisement of reachable destinations should be grouped with the advertisement of the next hop to be used for these destinations, and that the advertisement of reachable destinations should be segregated from the advertisement of unreachable destinations. To provide backward compatibility, as well as to simplify introduction of the multiprotocol capabilities into BGP-4 this document uses two new attributes, Multiprotocol Reachable NLRI (MP_REACH_NLRI), and Multiprotocol Unreachable NLRI (MP_UNREACH_NLRI). The first one (MP_REACH_NLRI) is used to carry the set of reachable destinations together with the next hop information to be used for forwarding to these destinations. The second one (MP_UNREACH_NLRI) is used to carry the set of unreachable destinations. Both of these attributes are optional and non- transitive. This way a BGP speaker that doesn't support the multiprotocol capabilities will just ignore the information carried in these attributes, and will not pass it to other BGP speakers. 4. Multiprotocol Reachable NLRI - MP_REACH_NLRI (Type Code 14): This is an optional non-transitive attribute that can be used for the following purposes: (a) to advertise a feasible route to a peer (b) to permit a router to advertise the Network Layer address of the router that should be used as the next hop to the destinations listed in the Network Layer Reachability Information field of the MP_NLRI attribute. (c) to allow a given router to report some or all of the Subnetwork Points of Attachment (SNPAs) that exist within the local system The attribute contains one or more triples <Address Family Information, Next Hop Information, Network Layer Reachability Information>, where each triple is encoded as shown below: Bates, et. al. Standards Track [Page 2]Show full document text