Assignment on External Border Gateway Protocol (EBGP)

Introduction of External Border Gateway Protocol (EBGP)

            Majan Group of Companies is now planning to restructure, as well as planning to upgrade the network in the order for keeping the recent with next upgrades in the networks. The company is Oman based as well as has three branches in different areas. The report is telling about how to implement the eBPG in the remote access network. The network administrator at the head office who is controlling everything in the system as well as management assigned the team to conduct the relevant study for the proposed technology, which could be adapted for a network upgrade. In straightforward works, this report is conducted because it will guide how they will adapt the network technology as well as how the system will be upgraded.

The report is providing a brief introduction of the selected technology along with the brief background, which will make the report more valuable as well as the team as well as the related persons of the company who are struggling to bring the change in the network or want to upgrade the network. It can make it easier for them because the background will provide a lot of information, which is significant as well as some concepts that will be cleared. In this report, the brief information on the technologies is discussed, which are telling how it will work as well as how the operations will be performed.

A brief, as well as critical analysis, is also available, which is telling you that which technology is best to upgrade the network of the company. The most import part of this report is the analysis part, which will provide a brief knowledge about the technology of how it is best in the account of the analysis. The implementation part provides a piece of comprehensive information as well as knowledge for technology as well as the discussion on the implementation is also conducted, which will make the things easier for the networking teams as well as can make the things more reliable for getting a better understanding. After all of this, the conclusion part is also made which is providing the brief summary of the whole report, and it is very effective because it provides some major as well as key significant points which will make the reader able to take the quick overview of the report which tells about what the study is for and what it is saying. Some recommendations are also made in the part of the recommendations. The recommendations are made because every technology is not the best or optimum because every scenario is very different. Due to the distinction in the technologies as well as in the scenarios, every technology needs some planning as well as some techniques or the best suggestions because the suggestions can make able every solution as well as every methodology for the system or the implementation best and operable for the upgrade of the technology. So the recommendation part is made for the convenience of the team that how they can effectively choose the best techniques for the implementation of the network. In the last of the report, some references are also given at the end of the report.

Background of External Border Gateway Protocol (EBGP)

            The border gateway protocol is also known as the consistent exterior gateway protocol designed for the exchange of the reachability information as well as the routing between the autonomous systems on the internet. As a path vector protocol, the protocol is classified. The routing decisions are made by the border gateway protocol that is based upon the policies of the network, rule-sets, or the particular paths by the administrator of the network, as well as it is also included in the making decisions for the basic routing. Furthermore, it may also use the border gateway protocol (BGP) into the autonomous system for routing. In the application of the selected technology, it is referred to as the iBGP or interior border gateway protocol. But something is gone in the contradiction, and the internet application layer may be referred to as eBGP, external BGP, or the exterior border gateway protocol (Waites, et al., 2016).

            For the convenience of the readers, some kind of history is also given in this report, which can be helpful for those who are interested in getting a brief introduction as well as a brief background because of many concepts of the technology. In the year of 2006, the very of BGP was published with the name of RFC 4271, which is now currently used as well as it is the fourth version as BGP4. With the common industry practices, the ambiguities were clarified, errors were corrected as well as the specifications were updated by RFC 4271. For the classless inter-domain routing as well as the use of the route aggregation, the major enhancement was the support for minimization of the size of the tables of the routing. Furthermore, the BGP4 has also been in the usage of the size of the internet since the year 1994. In the year of 1995, the concept of the IPv6 BGP was initially defined in RFC 1883, as well as it was improved in the year of 1998 to RFC 2283. BGP 4 is allowed by the new RFC for carrying a wider range of IPv6 as well as IPv4 “the internet families of IP addresses." Furthermore, the system is also called as the multiprotocol extensions, which is multiprotocol for BGP.

Moreover, BGP is basically a protocol that is able to manage as well as handle how the packets are routed throughout the internet by using routing exchange as well as the information of reachability among the edge routers. Among the autonomous systems, the packets are accepted by BGP as the networks handled by the provider of the service or by the single company. Furthermore, within the single network of an autonomous system that it routes the traffic as well as is referred for the internal BGP. It uses BGP for making connections one independent system to multiple autonomous systems, as well as it is also referred to as the eBGP (Anumala, Lapuh, & Unbehagen, 2015).

Why BGP used?

The network stability is offered by BGP, which gives the guarantee to the routers can adapt immediately for sending the packets by using different reconnection when one path on the internet will go down as well as more traffic cannot go through that path. Furthermore, the routing decisions are made by border gateway protocol, which is based on the network policies, the connection paths as well as the rules established by the administrator of the network. The standard routing table is maintained by every single router of BGP as well as the standard routing table is used in the transit for the direct pocket. Although, the table is used with the separate routing table in the conjunction as well as known as routing information base, which is based on the table stored on the server on the router of border gateway protocol. The route information is contained from directly associated with the continual updates, the external peers as well as the internal peers by the RIB as the change comes into the shape. BGP uses the topology on the client-server as well as it is also based on TCP/IP for the communication routing information along with the client-server beginning of the session of BGP through sending the request to the server (Butler, Farley, McDaniel, & Rexford, 2009).

Operation of BGP of External Border Gateway Protocol (EBGP)

            The neighbors of BGP are called as peers who are recognized by the manual configuration between different routers for the creation of the TCP session on 179 port. To maintain the connection, a BGP speaker sends 19-byte to keep-alive messages every sixty seconds. BGP is currently unique in the using of TCP between the protocols of the routing. Furthermore, it is referred to as the internal BGP when BGP runs among two peers within similar autonomous systems. On the other side, when it runs among the different autonomous systems, then it is known as the external BGP or eBGP. While the peers of I-BGP can be interconnected by the use of the different intermediate routers, the router at the boundary of one as the exchanging information along with another as the edge router is traditionally associated directly. The other technologies for the development are also possible, as the running peers of eBGP inside a VPN tunnel and also allowing two sites of remote for the exchanging the information of routing within the isolated as well as secure manner. The significant difference among eBGP as well as iBPG peering is in the way routes that received from one peer to other peers, which are propagated. It can be understood with the help of an example. Suppose the new routers learned from the peer of the eGBP are usually redistributed to all of the peers of iBGP and on the other side, distinguished peers of eBGP. Although it learns the new routes on the peering of iBGP then it re-advertise those routes only for the peers of all of the eBGP. Furthermore, it also effectively require the rules of the propagation routes, in which all peers of iBGP inside an autonomous system are also organized within the full mesh. It also can control propagated routes within the detail through the mechanism of the route maps. It has also consisted of the mechanism of a set of rules. Every rule describes what actions should be taken for the routes matching some given criteria. To modify some of the attributes of the routes the route before input it in the table of the route, the action could be for the drop the route (Quoitin, Pelsser, Swinnen, & Uhlig, 2003).   

The operations of the BGP can be summarized in a simple way. In the start, this system is involved in learning the multiple paths through the help of internal and external BGP speakers. Then after this in the next step it picks up the best path and then installed in the IP forwarding table. Then after this there are different policies are applied after selecting the best path.

This can be explained with the help of example like it will establish a session on the TCP port 179 let suppose. Then after this it will exchange all active routes properly with one another. In the last step it will provide information related to exchange incremental updates. This will give information only when the connection is alive and it will upload route update messages.

Analysis of External Border Gateway Protocol (EBGP)

eBGP vs iBGP

eBGP as well as iBGP, both are the types of the BGP protocol which are used for the routing and are using to make the connection as well as manages the traffic of the routes. The external border gateway protocol is a type of border gateway protocol which is used to communicate amongst distinguished autonomous systems. The functions of the protocol are responsible for the network’s interconnection from the different service providers. eBGP is also implemented at the edge of the router, which will provide the interconnectivity for multiple autonomous systems (Park, Jen, Lad, Amante, & Zhang, 2010). On the other side, iBGP is also a protocol that is completely used amongst the routers within the same autonomous systems, as well as it is also used for the provision of significant information to the internal routers. Furthermore, all of the devices are also required by iBGP in the similar autonomous systems for the establishment of the full neighborship mesh for prefix learning. A brief comparison is also made between both of the types which are telling a lot.

Advantages and disadvantages of BGP

Advantages of External Border Gateway Protocol (EBGP)

·         This networking router is extremely efficient to use for the users

·         Through this it will become extremely easy for the user to implement on large scale

·         It is also extremely good for different ISPs or anything that involves many connections through different hosts

·         This type of communication also preventing different loops when there are different multiple physical links are present.

·         Through the help of such networking it will be easy to balance the redundant links.

Disadvantages of External Border Gateway Protocol (EBGP)

·         It is not stable, sometime disconnection may occur due to this there is loss of huge amount of data.

·         There is also no digital identifiers are present that will implicit trust between the routers and the BGP.

·         There are quite low alternative paths that can be used by the network.

Discussion & Implementation

For the implementation of eBGP, the network team requires to perform some tasks. There are three steps for the configuration of eBGP, which are mentioned in this report.

·         Enable BGP routing

·         Neighbor configuration of BGP

·         Advertisement of the networks originating from the autonomous system

There are some commands which are used to configure the router, as well as these commands along with the configuration, are also mentioned in the table below.

Step 1:

 Step 2:

 All of these commands are playing an important role in BGP routing. Like it can be noted through the router command ‘router BGP’ as-number. This command is involved in enabling the process of routing the BGP and also enable router configuration mode. This means that with the help of this command it will become be quite simple to enable router configuration mode of the system.

The next command is related to the router neighbour ‘ip-addrees remote- as as-number’. This command can be implemented only when there is requirement of any BGP neighbour. Through the help of this neighbour it will be quite simple to exchange information between the networks.

The next command is related to the ‘show ip Route’. If the user wanted to analyse the related routes of BGP and its neighbour. With the help of this command it will be quite simple for the user to view the main values of the BGP system.

 Conclusion of External Border Gateway Protocol (EBGP)

            I have concluded that the company is planning to restructure, reorganize as well as update and upgrade the network. For this purpose, the implementation report is formed for the convenience of the network team. So many things are included in the report which is providing brief information on the technology. In the year of 2006, the very of BGP was published with the name of RFC 4271, which is now currently used as well as it is the fourth version as BGP4. Among the autonomous systems, the packets are accepted by BGP as the networks handled by the provider of the service or by the single company.

The standard routing table is maintained by every single router of BGP as well as the standard routing table is used in the transit for the direct pocket. The significant difference among eBGP as well as iBPG peering is in the way routes that received from one peer to other peers, which are propagated. It can be understood with the help of an example. The external border gateway protocol is a type of border gateway protocol which is used to communicate amongst distinguished autonomous systems.

The functions of the protocol are responsible for the network’s interconnection from the different service providers. On the other side, iBGP is also a protocol that is completely used amongst the routers within the same autonomous systems, as well as it is also used for the provision of significant information to the internal routers. The implementation is also discussed in this report, which is mentioned in the tables as well as the commands are also given, which can be helpful to configure the route to update the network of the organization.

Recommendation of External Border Gateway Protocol (EBGP)

The team should have to focus on the technology of eBGP. The main thing the team has to do that they should focus on eBGP if they want to upgrade the network of the company, but in the case study clearly mentioned that the company has three branches throughout the country in the different areas. So that's why the company should adopt the internal border gateway system because it has the ability to make the connections between the branches as well as outside of the company. The company should have to go with the technology because it can manage the network easily.

References of External Border Gateway Protocol (EBGP)

Anumala, M., Lapuh, R., & Unbehagen, &. P. (2015). U.S. Patent No. 8,929,364. . Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Butler, K., Farley, T. R., McDaniel, P., & Rexford, &. J. (2009). A survey of BGP security issues and solutions. , 98(1), . Proceedings of the IEEE, 100-122.

Park, J. H., Jen, D., Lad, M., Amante, S., & Zhang, D. M. (2010). Investigating occurrence of duplicate updates in BGP announcements. In International Conference on Passive and Active Network Measurement, 11-20.

Quoitin, B., Pelsser, C., Swinnen, L., & Uhlig, O. B. (2003). Interdomain traffic engineering with BGP. IEEE Communications magazine, 122-128.

Waites, W., Sweet, J., Baig, R., Buneman, P., Fayed, M., Hughes, G., & Simmons, &. R. (2016). Remix: A distributed internet exchange for remote and rural networks. In Proceedings of the 2016 workshop on Global Access to the Internet for All, 25-30.