Configuring BGP4+ Route Dampening

Usage Scenario

BGP4+ route dampening is designed to suppress unstable routes and improve network stability. With BGP4+ route dampening, a BGP4+ device does not add any unstable routes to its BGP4+ routing table or advertise them to its BGP4+ peers.

A primary cause of route instability is route flapping. A route is considered to be flapping when it repeatedly appears and then disappears in the routing table. BGP4+ is applied to complex networks where routes change frequently. Frequent route flapping consumes lots of bandwidth and CPU resources and even seriously affects network operations. To prevent the impact of frequent route flapping, BGP4+ uses route dampening to suppress unstable routes.

With specified-requirement route dampening, you can use a route-policy to differentiate routes so that BGP4+ can apply route dampening parameters to different routes. You can also configure different route dampening parameters for different nodes of the same route-policy. When route flapping occurs, BGP4+ can use different route dampening parameters to suppress the routes that match the route-policy. For example, on a network, set a long dampening time for routes with a long mask, and set a short dampening time for routes with a short mask (8-bit mask for example).

Pre-configuration Tasks

Before configuring BGP4+ route dampening, configure basic BGP4+ functions.