Total BGP for engineers

A detailed study of BGP, from the basics of how it works through to advanced issues such as route reflectors, policy, filtering, route selection and routing registries. The course culminates with a study of an industrial strength BGP template illustrating important issues such as bogon filtering. Practical hands on with routers follow the major sessions to reinforce the theory.

Prerequisites

There are no formal prerequisite courses, just a solid knowledge of how IP works.

Delegates should be familiar with the knowledge in TCP/IP foundation for engineers and Definitive IP Routing for Engineers .

By the end of the course delegates will be able to:

• Connect enterprises to the Internet, and ISPs to each other.
• Describe how BGP works.
• List, describe and configure the main BGP attributes.
• Implement and troubleshoot BGP.
• Work with route aggregation and calculate CIDR prefixes in seconds.
• Influence traffic paths with BGP.
• Implement and troubleshoot MPLS.

Basic BGP

IGPs, EGPs, What’s BGP? BGP RIB, in/out process, tables peers, adding routes.

Hands on: Simple configuration and troubleshooting.

The Internet and peering

ASs, AS numbers, Internet structure, ISP types, ISP network design, IXs, peering vs. transit, public/ private peering, bi/multi-lateral peering.

Hands on: AS information gathering.

How BGP works

Incremental updates, Path vector protocols, BGP protocol stack, the BGP header, message types, NLRI, withdrawn routes, route refresh, route dampening.

Hands on: More troubleshooting, packet analysis.

MBGP and IPv6

Multiprotocol routing, AFI, SAFI, MBGP and multicasts, IPv6, MPLS VPNs.

Hands on: IPv6

BGPv4 aggregation

CIDR, benefits, techniques, shortcuts, configuring BGP aggregation, leaking routes.

Hands on: Reducing routing table size.

BGP path selection

BGP attributes, attribute types, route selection order, Local preference, AS prepend, MEDs.

Hands on: Influencing traffic with BGP.

BGP routing policies

What is policy? Examples, route filtering, AS filtering, REs, applying preference selectively, peer groups.

Hands on: Sophisticated policies.

RIPE and routing registries

RIRs, Allocations, assignments, PI vs. PA. Objects, RPSL, routing registry,

Hands on: The RIPE database.

Automating BGP configuration

Automation tools, whois, IRRToolSet, Bogon lists, tracking bogon lists, HTTP, Peering, routing registries, DNS.

Communities

What is a community? Community names, communities for: peer types and geography. RFC 1998, default communities.

Hands on: Setting local preference on other routers.

Route servers

What are route servers? LINX route servers, route server policy control, What are route collectors, Looking glasses.

Hands on: Setting up and working with a route server.

Peer relationships

IBGP, EBGP, next hop self, advertising routes into/out of BGP, synchronisation.

Hands on: IBGP, troubleshooting a large BGP network.

Route reflectors and confederations

Full mesh IBGP, Route reflectors, RR configuration and design, confederations, migration issues.

Hands on: RR configuration.

BGP architectures

Stub vs. transit AS, when to use BGP, multihoming strategies and issues, default routes. Multihop EBGP, load balancing.

Hands on: Multihoming.

BGP security

RFC 7454, security steps, BGP TTL security, filters, RPKI, ROAs, rsync, rrdp, validators. A secure BGP template.

Hands on: RPKI prefix validation.