BGP Origin Code Attribute explained

The BGP Origin Code is one of the attributes that is used for path selection. There are
three origin codes that the BGP table can show:

 IGP (shows up as i)

 EGP (shows up as e)
 Incomplete (shows up as ?)
You will see IGP when you use the network command for BGP. It means you
advertised the network yourself in BGP. EGP is historical and you won’t see it in the
BGP table anymore. EGP is an old routing protocol we don’t use it anymore. Incomplete
means you have redistributed something into BGP. Here’s a demonstration:

Above you can see the topology that I will use. R1 and R3 are in AS1 and connected to
R2 in AS2. Both routers have a loopback0 interface with network 1.1.1.0/24 configured
on it.

R1(config)#router bgp 1
R1(config-router)#neighbor 192.168.12.2 remote-as 2
R3(config)#router bgp 1
R3(config-router)#neighbor 192.168.23.2 remote-as 2
R2(config)#router bgp 2
R2(config-router)#neighbor 192.168.12.1 remote-as 1
R2(config-router)#neighbor 192.168.23.3 remote-as 1

First we’ll configure BGP. Next step is to get network 1.1.1.0/24 in the BGP table:

R1(config)#router bgp 1
R1(config-router)#network 1.1.1.0 mask 255.255.255.0
R3(config)#router bgp 1
R3(config-router)#redistribute connected

On R1 I’ll advertise network 1.1.1.0/24 in BGP with the network command, on R3 we’ll
redistribute it. Let’s see what R2 thinks of this…

R2#show ip bgp
BGP table version is 4, local router ID is 192.168.23.2
Status codes: s suppressed, d damped, h history, * valid, > best, i
- internal,
r RIB-failure, S Stale
Origin codes: i - IGP, e - EGP, ? - incomplete

Network Next Hop Metric LocPrf Weight Path

* 1.1.1.0/24 192.168.23.3 0 0 1 ?
*> 192.168.12.1 0 0 1 i

In the output above you can see that R2 learned both networks through BGP. There’s
one small difference however. The first entry shows a ? symbol and the second entry
shows an ‘i’.