Configure BGP

Configure general virtual router settings.
Enable BGP for the virtual router, assign a router ID, and assign the virtual router to an AS.
Select
Network
Virtual Routers
and select a virtual router.
Select
BGP
.
Enable
BGP for this virtual router.
Assign a
Router ID
to BGP for the virtual router, which is typically an IPv4 address to ensure the Router ID is unique.
Assign the
AS Number
—the number of the AS to which the virtual router belongs based on the router ID (range is 1 to 4,294,967,295).
Click
OK
.
Configure general BGP configuration settings.
Select
Network
Virtual Routers
and select a virtual router.
Select
BGP
General
.
Select
Reject Default Route
to ignore any default routes that are advertised by BGP peers.
Select
Install Route
to install BGP routes in the global routing table.
Select
Aggregate MED
to enable route aggregation even when routes have different Multi-Exit Discriminator (MED) values.
Specify the
Default Local Preference
that can be used to determine preferences among different paths.
Select the
AS Format
for interoperability purposes:
2 Byte
(default)
4 Byte
Runtime stats display BGP 4-byte AS numbers using asplain notation according to RFC 5396.
Enable or disable each of the following settings for
Path Selection
:
Always Compare MED
—Enable this comparison to choose paths from neighbors in different autonomous systems.
Deterministic MED Comparison
—Enable this comparison to choose between routes that are advertised by IBGP peers (BGP peers in the same autonomous system).
For
Auth Profiles
,
Add
an authentication profile:
Profile Name
—Enter a name to identify the profile.
Secret/Confirm Secret
—Enter and confirm a passphrase for BGP peer communications. The Secret is used as a key in MD5 authentication.
Click
OK
twice.
(
Optional
) Configure BGP settings.
Select
Network
Virtual Routers
and select a virtual router.
Select
BGP
Advanced
.
Select
ECMP Multiple AS Support
if you configured ECMP and you want to run ECMP over multiple BGP autonomous systems.
Enforce First AS for EBGP
(enabled by default) to cause the firewall to drop an incoming Update packet from an eBGP peer that does not list the eBGP peer’s own AS number as the first AS number in the AS_PATH attribute.
Select
Graceful Restart
and configure the following timers:
Stale Route Time (sec)
—Specifies the length of time, in seconds, that a route can stay in the stale state (range is 1 to 3,600; default is 120).
Local Restart Time (sec)
—Specifies the length of time, in seconds, that the local device waits to restart. This value is advertised to peers (range is 1 to 3,600; default is 120).
Max Peer Restart Time (sec)
—Specifies the maximum length of time, in seconds, that the local device accepts as a grace period restart time for peer devices (range is 1 to 3,600; default is 120).
For
Reflector Cluster ID
, specify an IPv4 identifier to represent the reflector cluster.
For
Confederation Member AS
, specify the autonomous system number identifier (also called a sub-AS number), which is visible only within the BGP confederation. For more information, see BGP Confederations.
Add
the following information for each Dampening Profile that you want to configure, select
Enable
, and click
OK
:
Profile Name
—Enter a name to identify the profile.
Cutoff
—Specify a route withdrawal threshold above which a route advertisement is suppressed (range is 0.0 to 1,000.0; default is 1.25).
Reuse
—Specify a route withdrawal threshold below which a suppressed route is used again (range is 0.0 to 1,000.0; default is 5).
Max Hold Time (sec)
—Specify the maximum length of time, in seconds, that a route can be suppressed, regardless of how unstable it has been (range is 0 to 3,600; default is 900).
Decay Half Life Reachable (sec)
—Specify the length of time, in seconds, after which a route’s stability metric is halved if the route is considered reachable (range is 0 to 3,600; default is 300).
Decay Half Life Unreachable (sec)
—Specify the length of time, in seconds, after which a route’s stability metric is halved if the route is considered unreachable (range is 0 to 3,600; default is 300).
Click
OK
twice.
Configure a BGP peer group.
Select
Network
Virtual Routers
and select a virtual router.
Select
BGP
Peer Group
,
Add
a
Name
for the peer group, and
Enable
it.
Select
Aggregated Confed AS Path
to include a path to the configured aggregated confederation AS.
Select
Soft Reset with Stored Info
to perform a soft reset of the firewall after updating the peer settings.
Select the
Type
of peer group:
IBGP
—
Export Next Hop
: Select
Original
or
Use self
.
EBGP Confed
—
Export Next Hop
: Select
Original
or
Use self
.
EBGP Confed
—
Export Next Hop
: Select
Original
or
Use self
.
EBGP
—
Import Next Hop
: Select
Original
or
Use self
; and
Export Next Hop
: Specify
Resolve
or
Use self
. Select
Remove Private AS
if you want to force BGP to remove private AS numbers from the AS_PATH attribute in Updates that the firewall sends to a peer in another AS.
Click
OK
.
Configure a BGP peer that belongs to the peer group and specify its addressing.
Select
Network
Virtual Routers
and select a virtual router.
Select
BGP
Peer Group
and select the peer group you created.
For Peer,
Add
a peer by
Name
.
Enable
the peer.
Enter the
Peer AS
to which the peer belongs.
Select
Addressing
.
For
Local Address
, select the
Interface
for which you are configuring BGP. If the interface has more than one
IP
address, enter the IP address for that interface to be the BGP peer.
For
Peer Address
, select either
IP
and enter the IP address or select or create an address object, or select
FQDN
and enter the FQDN or address object that is type FQDN.
The firewall uses only one IP address (from each IPv4 or IPv6 family type) from the DNS resolution of the FQDN. If the DNS resolution returns more than one address, the firewall uses the preferred IP address that matches the IP family type (IPv4 or IPv6) configured for the BGP peer. The preferred IP address is the first address the DNS server returns in its initial response. The firewall retains this address as preferred as long as the address appears in subsequent responses regardless of its order.
Click
OK
.
Configure connection settings for the BGP peer.
Select
Network
Virtual Routers
and select a virtual router.
Select
BGP
Peer Group
and select the peer group you created.
Select the
Peer
you configured.
Select
Connection Options
.
Select an
Auth Profile
for the peer.
Set a
Keep Alive Interval (sec)
—The interval, in seconds, after which routes from the peer are suppressed according to the Hold Time setting (range is 0 to 1,200; default is 30).
Set
Multi Hop
—The time-to-live (TTL) value in the IP header (range is 0 to 255; default is 0). The default value of 0 means 1 for eBGP. The default value of 0 means 255 for iBGP.
Set
Open Delay Time (sec)
—The delay, in seconds, between a TCP handshake and the firewall sending the first BGP Open message to establish a BGP connection (range is 0 to 240; default is 0).
Set
Hold Time (sec)
—The length of time, in seconds, that may elapse between successive Keepalive or Update messages from the peer before the peer connection is closed (range is 3 to 3,600; default is 90).
Set
Idle Hold Time (sec)
—The length of time to wait, in seconds, before retrying to connect to the peer (range is 1 to 3,600; default is 15).
Set
Min Route Advertisement Interval (sec)
—The minimum amount of time, in seconds, between two successive Update messages that a BGP speaker (the firewall) sends to a BGP peer that advertise routes or withdrawal of routes (range is 1 to 600; default is 30).
For
Incoming Connections
, enter a
Remote Port
and select
Allow
to allow incoming traffic to this port.
For
Outgoing Connections
, enter a
Local Port
and select
Allow
to allow outgoing traffic from this port.
Click
OK
.
Configure the BGP peer with settings for route reflector client, peering type, maximum prefixes, and Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD).
Select
Network
Virtual Routers
and select a virtual router.
Select
BGP
Peer Group
and select the peer group you created.
Select the
Peer
you configured.
Select
Advanced
.
For
Reflector Client
, select one of the following:
non-client
(default)—Peer is not a route reflector client.
client
—Peer is a route reflector client.
meshed-client
For
Peering Type
, select one of the following:
Bilateral
—The two BGP peers establish a peer connection.
Unspecified
(default).
For
Max Prefixes
, enter the maximum number of IP prefixes to import from the peer (range is 1 to 100,000) or select
unlimited
.
To enable
BFD
for the peer (and thereby override the BFD setting for BGP, as long as BFD is not disabled for BGP at the virtual router level), select one of the following:
default
—Peer uses only default BFD settings.
Inherit-vr-global-setting
(default)—Peer inherits the BFD profile that you selected globally for BGP for the virtual router.
A BFD profile you configured—See Create a BFD Profile.
Select
Disable BFD
to disable BFD for the BGP peer.
Click
OK
.
Configure Import and Export rules.
The import and export rules are used to import and export routes from and to other routers (for example, importing the default route from your Internet Service Provider).
Select
Import
,
Add
a name (maximum of 63 characters) in the
Rules
field. The name must start with an alphanumeric character and can contain a combination of alphanumeric characters, underscore (_), hyphen (-), dot (.), and space.
Enable
the rule.
Add
the
Peer Group
from which the routes will be imported.
Select
Match
and define the options used to filter routing information. You can also define the Multi-Exit Discriminator (MED) value and a next hop value to routers or subnets for route filtering. The MED option is an external metric that lets neighbors know about the preferred path into an AS. A lower value is preferred over a higher value.
Select
Action
and define the action that should occur (allow or deny) based on the filtering options defined in the
Match
tab. If you select
Deny
, you don’t need to define any additional options. If you select
Allow
, then define the other attributes.
Click
OK
.
Select
Export
and define export attributes, which are similar to the
Import
settings but are used to control route information that is exported from the firewall to neighbors. The name of the Export rule can be a maximum of 31 characters.
Configure conditional advertising, which allows you to control what route to advertise in the event that a different route is not available in the local BGP routing table (LocRIB), indicating a peering or reachability failure.
This is useful in cases where you want to try to force routes to one AS over another, such as when you have links to the internet through multiple ISPs and you want traffic to be routed to one provider instead of the other except when there is a loss of connectivity to the preferred provider.
Select
Conditional Adv
and
Add
a
Policy
name.
Enable
the conditional advertisement.
In the
Used By
section,
Add
the peer groups that will use the conditional advertisement policy.
Select
Non Exist Filter
and define the network prefixes of the preferred route. This specifies the route that you want to advertise when it is available in the local BGP routing table. If a prefix is going to be advertised and matches a Non Exist filter, the advertisement will be suppressed.
Select
Advertise Filters
and define the prefixes of the route in the Local-RIB routing table that should be advertised in the event that the route in the non-exist filter is unavailable in the local routing table. If a prefix is going to be advertised and does not match a Non Exist filter, the advertisement will occur.
Click
OK
.
Configure aggregate options to summarize routes in the BGP configuration.
BGP route aggregation is used to control how BGP aggregates addresses. Each entry in the table results in the creation of one aggregate address. This will result in an aggregate entry in the routing table when at least one specific route matching the address specified is learned.
Select
Aggregate
and
Add
a name for the aggregate address.
Enter the network
Prefix
that will be the primary prefix for the aggregated prefixes.
Select
Suppress Filters
and define the attributes that will cause the matched routes to be suppressed.
Select
Advertise Filters
and define the attributes that will cause the matched routes to always be advertised to peers.
Click
OK
.
Configure redistribution rules.
This rule is used to redistribute host routes and unknown routes that are not on the local RIB to the peer routers.
Select
Redist Rules
and
Add
a new redistribution rule.
Enter the
Name
of an IP subnet or select a redistribution profile. You can also configure a new redistribution profile if needed.
Enable
the rule.
Enter the route
Metric
that will be used for the rule.
In the
Set Origin
list, select
incomplete
,
igp
, or
egp
.
(
Optional
) Set MED, local preference, AS path limit, and community values.
Click
OK
.
Commit
your changes.