BGP Route Damping

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 Route Instabilities
 Routes can appear and disappear rapidly
• Called route flapping or just flapping
 Rapid sequence of update and withdrawn BGP messages
• Every BGP router that gets an update or withdrawn message
must propagate it to its peers
• Effects quickly cascade and affect router performance
• Consumes processing power and bandwidth

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 Causes of Route Instability
 Faulty circuits (most common)
 IGP instability
• Dynamic injection of IGP routes into BGP (static definition
and aggregation helps)
 Human error
• Incorrect routing policy
 Link congestion
• Overloaded links drop BGP sessions
 In the past, some routers have had problems
• Software problems (bugs, especially after upgrades)
• Insufficient power (for example, busy CPU drops BGP
sessions)
• Insufficient memory (tables are kept in memory)
• Network upgrades and maintenance (adding equipment)

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 BGP Stability Features
 Route damping is the main BGP mechanism to control
the route flapping effects
• Defined in RFC 2439, BGP Route Flap Damping (November
1998)
 Damping is ignored on IBGP sessions
 Damping applies to EBGP sessions
• EBGP sessions can carry thousands of routes
• EBGP must update or withdraw these routes as required

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 ISPs and Route Damping
 Route damping is enabled in AS 1 cloud:
Internet

172.31.0/20—up
AS 1 172.31.128/20—up

172.31.0/20—up
172.31.128/20—up R2

R1

172.31.0/20—up
172.31.64/20—up/down/up/down…
Customer 172.31.128/20—up

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 Figure of Merit
 Type of point value given to a route that becomes a penalty if
it exceeds some value (suppress)
 New route gets a figure of merit of 0
 Point value of given incidents:
• 1000 points when route is withdrawn
• 1000 points when route is readvertised
• 500 points when the path attribute is changed
 Points decay (reduce) at a certain rate (half-life)
 If points exceed cutoff (suppress) threshold, route is
suppressed (must be less than or equal to merit ceiling value)
 When points fall below certain value (reuse), route is used
again
 Maximum penalty imposed by max-suppress value

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 Damping Parameters
 suppress: Cutoff (suppression) threshold
• Value of penalty when damping is initiated
• Default value 3000 (if changed, must be less than or equal to merit
ceiling value c or no damping occurs)
 reuse: Reuse threshold
• Value to which penalty must decay for route to be used again
• Default threshold is 750
 half-life: Decay half-life, in minutes
• Time it takes to reduce damping penalty by half
• Default is 15 minutes
 max-suppress: Maximum hold-down time, in minutes
• Longest time to suppress the route activity
• Default is 60 minutes

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 Figure of Merit Figure
 Exponential decay, and there is a fixed ceiling
Incidents
increase
Up
points

Down Decay rate determined

Suppress Up by half-life (15 minutes)
threshold
(3000) Down
Up

Reuse Down
limit
(750)

Up Time

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 Configuring Damping
 Damping parameters are defined within [policy
options] hierarchy
 Can use as a policy action
• half-life: 1–45 minutes, default 15
• max-suppress: 1–720 minutes, default 60
• reuse: 1–20000, default 750
• suppress: 1–20000, default 3000
• disable = do not damp
[edit policy-options]
damping name {
half-life minutes;
max-suppress minutes;
reuse number;
suppress number;
disable;
}
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 Damping Example (1 of 4)

Internet

AS 100
AS 1 Per-prefix
Aggressive
Default Damping Damping

R2 R1

R3

No Damping

Customer

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 Damping Example (2 of 4)
[edit policy-options]
policy-statement customer-inbound {
then damping do-not-damp;
}
policy-statement internet-inbound {
term let-some-through {
from {
route-filter 192.168.10.0/24 orlonger damping do-not-damp;
route-filter 172.16.240.0/24 orlonger damping do-not-damp;
route-filter 172.27.32.64/26 orlonger damping do-not-damp;
route-filter 192.168.100.0/24 orlonger damping do-not-damp;
}
then accept;
}
term damp-all-others {
then damping aggressive-damp;
}
}
damping do-not-damp {
disable; Is my policy correct?
}
damping aggressive-damp {
half-life 30;
reuse 200;
suppress 1500;
max-suppress 120;
}

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 Damping Example (3 of 4)
R2:
[edit protocols]
bgp { Internet
damping;
AS 100 }
AS 1

R2 R1

R3:
[edit protocols]
bgp { R3
damping; R1:
import customer-inbound; [edit protocols]
} bgp {
damping;
import internet-inbound;
Customer }

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 Damping Example (4 of 4)
[edit policy-options]
policy-statement internet-inbound {
term let-some-through {
from {
route-filter 192.168.10.0/24 orlonger;
route-filter 172.16.240.0/24 orlonger;
route-filter 172.27.32.64/26 orlonger;
route-filter 192.168.100.0/24 orlonger;
}
then {
damping do-not-damp;
accept;
}
}
term damp-all-others {
then damping aggressive-damp;
}
}

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 Viewing Withdrawn Routes
 show route damping history displays
withdrawn routes having a figure of merit:
user@router> show route damping history extensive
inet.0: 15 destinations, 15 routes (14 active, 0 holddown, 1 hidden)
+ = Active Route, - = Last Active, * = Both

200.200.200.0/24 (1 entry, 0 announced)

BGP Preference: /-101
Nexthop: 172.16.10.1 via fe-0/0/0.0, selected
State: <Hidden Ext>
Local AS: 2 Peer AS: 1
AS path: 1 I
Localpref: 100
Router ID: 192.168.1.1
Merit (last update/now): 2777/2454
Default damping parameters used
Last update: 00:02:45
First update: 00:04:35
Flaps: 3
History entry. Expires in: 00:54:20

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 Viewing Decayed Routes
 show route damping decayed displays active
routes having a figure of merit:
user@router> show route damping decayed extensive
inet.0: 15 destinations, 15 routes (15 active, 0 holddown, 0 hidden)
+ = Active Route, - = Last Active, * = Both

200.200.200.0/24 (1 entry, 1 announced)

*BGP Preference: 170/-101
Nexthop: 172.16.10.1 via fe-0/0/0.0, selected
State: <Active Ext>
Local AS: 2 Peer AS: 1
AS path: 1 I
Localpref: 100
Router ID: 192.168.1.1
Merit (last update/now): 2000/1954
Default damping parameters used
Last update: 00:00:35
First update: 00:00:40
Flaps: 2

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 Viewing Suppressed Routes
 show route damping suppressed displays
routes that were damped because of the figure of merit
 clear bgp damping
• Suppressed routes can have the figure of merit reduced to 0
• All routes (as well as individual routes) can be cleared

user@router> show route damping suppressed

inet.0: 15 destinations, 15 routes (14 active, 0 holddown, 1 hidden)
+ = Active Route, - = Last Active, * = Both

200.200.200.0/24 [BGP] 00:01:21, localpref 100

AS path: 1 I
> to 172.16.10.1 via fe-0/0/0.0

user@router> clear bgp damping

inet.0: 15 destinations, 15 routes (15 active, 0 holddown, 0 hidden)
+ = Active Route, - = Last Active, * = Both

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