note: Troubleshooting BGP Route-Reflection Issues

Route reflectors (RR), discussed in RFCs 1966 and 2796, are used to avoid IBGP full mesh in an AS, as required by RFC 1771. Route reflection ensures that all IBGP speakers in an AS receive BGP updates from all parts of the network without having to run IBGP between all the routers in the network. Route reflection reduces the number of required IBGP connections and also offers faster convergence in an IBGP network when compared with a full-mesh IBGP network. Route-reflector clients (RRCs) typically peer IBGP with one or more RR, and they can have EBGP connections unconditionally. Logical BGP connections between RR and RRC typically follow the physical connection topology. These are some of the common rules that help BGP operators troubleshoot BGP route-reflector issues 1.  Problem: Configuration Mistakes—Cause: Failed to Configure IBGP Neighbor as a Route-Reflector Client   The neighbor IP address must be the same in the route-reflector-client statement as in the remote-as configuration. The Cisco IOS Software BGP parser detects the misconfigured RRC IP address if BGP does not have an IBGP neighbor configured with this address. Solution: A BGP operator accidentally might configure a different IP address in the RRC than is configured in the neighbor statement where the remote AS is configured. If this problem is detected, the IP address must be corrected. 2.  Problem: Route-Reflector Client Stores an Extra BGP Update—Cause: Client-to-Client Reflection    Debug and Verification:   show ip bgp a.b.c.d Solution:   Turning off client-to-client reflection solves this problem. This problem arises only when an RRC peers IBGP with another RRC. When an RRC peers only with the RR, BGP does not run into this issue. 3.  Problem: Convergence Time Improvement for RR and Clients—Cause: Use of Peer Groups   When an RR is serving many clients, any update that it receives from IBGP/EBGP peers must be generated and propagated as separate updates for each RRC. If the number of BGP updates and RRCs is large, this process could become CPU-intensive for the RR. This results in slower propagation of BGP updates and hence results in slower convergence in the network overall. Peer-group clubs configure BGP neighbors in one group. Any common update that needs to go to all members of the peer group are processed only once, and all members receive the copy of that processed update. A router that has a peer group does not process update for all members of the group, resulting in huge CPU processing savings. Overall convergence of the networks improves greatly. Solution: When peering to several neighbors, use the Cisco IOS Software BGP peer group feature to avoid the processing duplication required to generate the same update to every neighbor. In peer groups, BGP neighbors (in this case, all RRCs) are listed as members of a peer group that share the same outbound policy. RR computes an update for the first member of the peer group and simply replicates the same update to all members. This greatly reduces the number of CPU cycles that the RR has to spend to compute update for each RRC. In addition, using peer groups speeds up the process of propagating BGP updates to RRCs; therefore, RRCs converge faster in case of any churn. Peer groups can be used in normal IBGP and EBGP scenarios to get this benefit, with the condition that all peer-group members are configured with same outbound policy. 4.  Problem: Loss of Redundancy Between Route Reflectors and Route-Reflector Client—Cause: Cluster List Check in RR Drops Redundant Route from Other RR   A cluster is made up of an RR and its clients. A cluster can have one or more RR and is identified by a cluster ID that is the router ID of the RR. Because each RR has a unique router ID, each cluster has only one RR by default. Network operators must manually configure identical cluster IDs on two or more RRs to configure them in the same cluster. When a BGP update traverses from an RR to other neighbors, RR adds its cluster ID in the list called the cluster list, which contains all cluster IDs that any BGP update has traversed. The cluster list is synonymous with the AS_PATH list, which contains AS lists that any update has traversed. Just as in AS_PATH loop detection, in which updates are dropped if the AS_PATH contains a local AS, the cluster list detects loops if they contain a local cluster ID. debug and verification: show ip bgp a.b.c.d debug ip bgp update Solution: result of the cluster list check. It is recommended that in cases similar to those depicted in Figure 15-33, RRs should not be put in the same cluster. The cluster ID will be picked as the router ID (RID) of each RR and is guaranteed to be unique because all RIDs are unique in any network.  RRs should not be put in the same cluster. The cluster ID will be picked as the router ID (RID) of each RR and is guaranteed to be unique because all RIDs are unique in any network.