How does BGP work?
This is a little beyond the scope of this document, however in simplest terms, BGP learns routes from your internal routing protocol (static routes, RIP, OSPF etc.) and announces them to a BGP-speaking neighbor or peer (the Sprint router in this case). This means that if you are running BGP, you are responsible for your own routing and announcements. Sprint routers learn about your network from your router. Unless you announce the route to us, we cannot send you traffic for that CIDR block. A route an nouncement is sometimes referred to as a ‘prefix’. A prefix is composed of a path of AS numbers, indicating which networks the packet must pass through, and the IP block that is being routed, so a BGP prefix would look something like: 701 1239 42 206.24. 14.0/24. The /24 part is referred to as a CIDR mask. The /24 indicates that there are 24 ones in the netmask for this block starting from the left hand side. A /24 corresponds to the natural mask 255.255.255.0.
Related Questions
- What is there in the Internet to stop me from making a mistake and announcing via BGP an aggregate that is larger than the nets I am in charge of?
- Can the 6WINDGate fast path modules be used with non 6WINDGate routing daemons (OSPF, BGP, etc.) and non 6WINDGate IKE?
- Does the router have to be restarted after a new BGP Neighbor Maximum Prefix is configured?
