BGP Route Reflection: An Alternative to Full Mesh Internal BGP
RFC 4456, “BGP Route Reflection: An Alternative to Full Mesh Internal BGP”, is a Draft Standard document published in April 2006 by T. Bates, E. Chen, R. Chandra. It obsoletes RFC 1966, RFC 2796. It has since been updated by RFC 7606. The canonical text is published by the RFC Editor.
Abstract
The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is an inter-autonomous system routing protocol designed for TCP/IP internets. Typically, all BGP speakers within a single AS must be fully meshed so that any external routing information must be re-distributed to all other routers within that Autonomous System (AS). This represents a serious scaling problem that has been well documented with several alternatives proposed.
This document describes the use and design of a method known as "route reflection" to alleviate the need for "full mesh" Internal BGP (IBGP).
This document obsoletes RFC 2796 and RFC 1966. [STANDARDS-TRACK]
What “Draft Standard” means
A historical maturity level (retired in 2011) that sat between Proposed Standard and Internet Standard and required multiple interoperable implementations.
The canonical text of RFC 4456 is hosted at rfc-editor.org. Available in TXT,HTML.
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