Subject: Protocol Action: BGP Route Reflection An alternative to full mesh IBGP to Proposed Standard

From: The IESG <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 03 Feb 2000 12:16:32 -0500

The IESG has approved the Internet-Draft 'BGP Route Reflection An
alternative to full mesh IBGP' <draft-ietf-idr-route-reflect-v2-03.txt>
as a Proposed Standard, updating RFC1966. This document is the product
of the Inter-Domain Routing Working Group.  The IESG contact persons
are David Oran and Rob Coltun.

Technical Summary
 
The Border Gateway Protocol is an inter-autonomous system routing
protocol designed for TCP/IP internets. Currently in the Internet BGP
deployments are configured such that that all BGP speakers within a
single AS must be fully meshed so that any external routing
information must be re-distributed to all other routers within that
AS. This represents a serious scaling problem that has been  well
documented with several alternatives proposed.

This document describes the use and design of a method known as
"Route Reflection" to alleviate the the need for "full mesh" IBGP.

Working Group Summary

This protocol has been experimental for some time despite its
use as a de-facto standard. This version of the draft is
an updated version of the experimental RFC. There were several
important issues raised a couple of meetings ago as documented
in an ID. The essential aspects of these issues have been folded into
this document.

Protocol Quality

This spec has been reviewed for the IESG by Rob Coltun. There
are several interoperable implementations. Route reflectors
are a fundamental component in the routing infrastructure
in ISP backbones.