Troubleshooting E-BGP Route Exchange Issue

Possible Causes of E-BGP Route Exchange Failure

Question

A remote operation center is deploying a set of I-BGP and E-BGP connections for multiple IOS-XR platforms using the same template.

The I-BGP sessions exchange prefixes with no apparent issues, but the E-BGP sessions do not exchange routes.

What causes this issue?

Answers

Explanations

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A. B. C. D.

B.

The issue described in the question is that the E-BGP sessions are not exchanging routes, while the I-BGP sessions are working fine. This indicates that the problem is specific to the E-BGP sessions and not a general routing issue.

Answer A suggests that mistyped I-BGP neighbors could be the cause, but this is unlikely as the I-BGP sessions are working fine. Answer B suggests that the customer platform's default policy is blocking E-BGP information exchange, but this is also unlikely as the problem is occurring on multiple IOS-XR platforms using the same template.

Answer C suggests that a "PASS ALL" policy is missing for the I-BGP neighbors, but this is not relevant to the problem at hand, which is related to the E-BGP sessions.

Answer D suggests that the "next-hop-self" command is not implemented on both E-BGP neighbors, which is the most likely cause of the issue. When BGP routes are advertised between different Autonomous Systems (AS), the next-hop attribute in the BGP updates must be changed to the IP address of the egress interface on the advertising router. If the next-hop-self command is not used, the next-hop attribute will still point to the IP address of the egress interface of the advertising router, which may not be reachable by the receiving router. This will prevent the E-BGP sessions from exchanging routes.

Therefore, the most likely cause of the problem described in the question is that the "next-hop-self" command is not implemented on both E-BGP neighbors.