Hands-On BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) Course

Lesson 1 • Routing Protocol Landscape Overview

Contrasts IGPs and EGPs to establish why BGP exists as the internet's routing backbone. Sets the conceptual stage for all subsequent BGP study.

Lesson 2 • BGP Message Types and State Machine

Explains the four BGP message types and the finite state machine governing session establishment. Students can trace a session from Idle to Established.

Lesson 3 • BGP Architecture and Terminology

Introduces core BGP vocabulary including speakers, peers, prefixes, and NLRI. Provides the shared language needed to interpret configurations and troubleshoot sessions.

Lesson 1 • BGP Attribute Categories

Classifies attributes as well-known mandatory, well-known discretionary, optional transitive, and optional non-transitive. Establishes the framework for understanding attribute propagation rules.

Lesson 2 • Community Attribute and Usage

Introduces standard and extended communities as policy signalling tools. Students configure community tagging and matching to influence routing decisions across AS boundaries.

Lesson 3 • BGP Best-Path Decision Process

Walks through the ordered decision algorithm step by step, from WEIGHT to router ID tiebreaker. Students can apply the algorithm to determine which path a router selects.

Lesson 4 • Core Path Attributes In Depth

Examines AS_PATH, NEXT_HOP, LOCAL_PREF, MED, and ORIGIN in detail. Students understand each attribute's default behaviour and propagation scope.

Lesson 1 • Configuring eBGP Peering Sessions

Covers neighbour statements, remote-AS assignment, and update-source selection for eBGP. Students build functional eBGP sessions between directly connected and loopback-addressed peers.

Lesson 2 • BGP Verification and Troubleshooting Basics

Introduces show and debug commands for validating BGP tables, attributes, and session states. Students systematically isolate common session and prefix advertisement failures.

Lesson 3 • Prefix Advertisement Methods

Covers network statements, redistribution, and aggregate-address for injecting prefixes into BGP. Students choose the appropriate method based on operational requirements.

Lesson 1 • Route Maps for BGP Policy

Covers route map structure, match conditions, and set actions for attribute manipulation and conditional filtering. Students build multi-clause route maps applied to BGP neighbours.

Lesson 2 • Inbound and Outbound Policy Design

Applies filtering tools to real-world scenarios: accepting only customer prefixes, advertising only owned space, and enforcing prefix length limits. Students implement complete neighbour policies.

Lesson 3 • AS_PATH Filtering with Regex

Introduces AS_PATH access lists using regular expressions to match routing announcements by origin or transit AS. Students write regex patterns for common filtering scenarios.

Lesson 1 • Route Reflector Design and Configuration

Explains cluster, client, and non-client roles, then covers CLUSTER_LIST and ORIGINATOR_ID loop prevention. Students configure a hierarchical route reflector topology.

Lesson 2 • Route Reflector Redundancy and Placement

Covers dual route reflector placement for resilience and the impact of RR location on optimal path selection. Students avoid common suboptimal routing pitfalls.

Lesson 3 • iBGP Scaling Challenges

Quantifies the O(n²) session growth problem and explains why full mesh becomes operationally unmanageable at scale. Motivates the need for route reflectors and confederations.

Lesson 1 • Community-Based Traffic Steering

Leverages provider-defined communities to request specific routing behaviours such as no-export or prepending. Students use community signalling to extend TE reach beyond direct peers.

Lesson 2 • Outbound Traffic Engineering

Uses LOCAL_PREF and WEIGHT to prefer specific exit points for outbound traffic. Students configure primary and backup exit policies across multiple upstream providers.

Lesson 3 • Inbound Traffic Engineering

Applies AS_PATH prepending and MED to influence how remote ASes send traffic inbound. Students balance inbound load across multiple upstream links.

Lesson 1 • BGPsec and Emerging Protections

Introduces BGPsec path validation and ASPA as next-generation controls beyond ROV. Students understand deployment challenges and the current adoption state.

Lesson 2 • BGP Threat Landscape

Surveys route hijacking, route leaks, and session-level attacks with real-world incident context. Establishes the security motivation for all techniques in this chapter.

Lesson 3 • Session Authentication and GTSM

Covers MD5 session authentication and Generalized TTL Security Mechanism to protect BGP TCP sessions. Students configure both controls and understand their limitations.

Lesson 4 • RPKI and Route Origin Validation

Explains RPKI trust anchor, ROA creation, and route origin validation states. Students configure a router to drop RPKI-invalid prefixes and verify validation outcomes.

Lesson 1 • BGP in Clos Fabric Design

Explains why BGP replaces IGPs in spine-leaf fabrics and covers unnumbered BGP for simplified peering. Students configure a leaf-spine BGP topology with private AS numbering.

Lesson 2 • Cloud Provider BGP Interconnection

Covers private dedicated interconnect and VPN-based BGP sessions to major cloud platforms. Students configure BGP peering parameters required by cloud provider on-ramp services.

Lesson 3 • BGP EVPN Fundamentals

Introduces EVPN as a BGP address family for MAC and IP advertisement in overlay networks. Students understand EVPN route types and their role in VXLAN control planes.

Lesson 4 • BGP for Network Virtualisation Overlays

Examines BGP's role as a control plane for VXLAN and other overlay technologies in multi-tenant environments. Students configure BGP-based overlay signalling and verify tenant isolation.