RFC 4781 · PROPOSED STANDARD · 2007

Graceful Restart Mechanism for BGP with MPLS

Overview

RFC 4781, “Graceful Restart Mechanism for BGP with MPLS”, is a Proposed Standard document published in January 2007 by Y. Rekhter, R. Aggarwal. The canonical text is published by the RFC Editor.

Abstract

A mechanism for BGP that helps minimize the negative effects on routing caused by BGP restart has already been developed and is described in a separate document ("Graceful Restart Mechanism for BGP"). This document extends this mechanism to minimize the negative effects on MPLS forwarding caused by the Label Switching Router's (LSR's) control plane restart, and specifically by the restart of its BGP component when BGP is used to carry MPLS labels and the LSR is capable of preserving the MPLS forwarding state across the restart.

The mechanism described in this document is agnostic with respect to the types of the addresses carried in the BGP Network Layer Reachability Information (NLRI) field. As such, it works in conjunction with any of the address families that could be carried in BGP (e.g., IPv4, IPv6, etc.). [STANDARDS-TRACK]

Abstract as published in the RFC, via rfc-editor.org.

What “Proposed Standard” means

An entry-level standards-track specification: stable, peer-reviewed and a solid basis for implementation, though it may still evolve before becoming an Internet Standard.

Read this RFC

The canonical text of RFC 4781 is hosted at rfc-editor.org. Available in TXT,HTML.

Other RFCs from 2007

Who Is Online

In total there are 132 users online: 0 registered, 125 guests and 7 bots.

Most users ever online was 1,226 on 13 Jun 2026, 3:56 am.

Bots: AhrefsBot Applebot Facebook Googlebot Other Bot Other Spider SemrushBot

Users active in the past 15 minutes. Total registered members: 354