Network Working Group                                            E. ChenRequest for Comments: 2918                              Redback NetworksCategory: Standards Track                                 September 2000                   Route Refresh Capability for BGP-4Status of this Memo   This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the   Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for   improvements.  Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet   Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state   and status of this protocol.  Distribution of this memo is unlimited.Copyright Notice   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2000).  All Rights Reserved.Abstract   This document defines a new Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) capability   termed 'Route Refresh Capability', which would allow the dynamic   exchange of route refresh request between BGP speakers and subsequent   re-advertisement of the respective Adj-RIB-Out.  One possible   application of this capability is to facilitate non-disruptive   routing policy changes.1. Introduction   Currently there does not exist a mechanism in BGP-4 [BGP-4] to   dynamically request a re-advertisement of the Adj-RIB-Out from a BGP   peer.  When the inbound routing policy for a peer changes, all   prefixes from that peer must be somehow made available and then re-   examined against the new policy. To accomplish this, a commonly used   approach, known as 'soft-reconfiguration', is to store an unmodified   copy of all routes from that peer at all times, even though routing   policies do not change frequently (typically no more than a couple   times a day). Additional memory and CPU are required to maintain   these routes.   This document proposes an alternative solution that avoids the   additional maintenance cost. More specifically, it defines a new BGP   capability termed 'Route Refresh Capability', which would allow the   dynamic exchange of route refresh request between BGP speakers and   subsequent re-advertisement of the respective Adj-RIB-Out.Chen                        Standards Track                     [Page 1]RFC 2918                Route Refresh for BGP-4           September 20002. Route Refresh Capability   To advertise the Route Refresh Capability to a peer, a BGP speaker   uses BGP Capabilities Advertisement [BGP-CAP]. This capability is   advertised using the Capability code 2 and Capability length 0.   By advertising the Route Refresh Capability to a peer, a BGP speaker   conveys to the peer that the speaker is capable of receiving and   properly handling the ROUTE-REFRESH message (as defined in Section 3)   from the peer.3. Route-REFRESH Message   The ROUTE-REFRESH message is a new BGP message type defined as   follows:          Type: 5 - ROUTE-REFRESH          Message Format: One <AFI, SAFI> encoded as                  0       7      15      23      31                  +-------+-------+-------+-------+                  |      AFI      | Res.  | SAFI  |                  +-------+-------+-------+-------+          The meaning, use and encoding of this <AFI, SAFI> field is the          same as defined in [BGP-MP, sect. 7]. More specifically,               AFI  - Address Family Identifier (16 bit).               Res. - Reserved (8 bit) field. Should be set to 0 by the                      sender and ignored by the receiver.               SAFI - Subsequent Address Family Identifier (8 bit).4. Operation   A BGP speaker that is willing to receive the ROUTE-REFRESH message   from its peer should advertise the Route Refresh Capability to the   peer using BGP Capabilities advertisement [BGP-CAP].   A BGP speaker may send a ROUTE-REFRESH message to its peer only if it   has received the Route Refresh Capability from its peer.  The <AFI,   SAFI> carried in such a message should be one of the <AFI, SAFI> that   the peer has advertised to the speaker at the session establishment   time via capability advertisement.Chen                        Standards Track                     [Page 2]RFC 2918                Route Refresh for BGP-4           September 2000   If a BGP speaker receives from its peer a ROUTE-REFRESH message with   the <AFI, SAFI> that the speaker didn't advertise to the peer at the   session establishment time via capability advertisement, the speaker   shall ignore such a message.  Otherwise, the BGP speaker shall re-   advertise to that peer the Adj-RIB-Out of the <AFI, SAFI> carried in   the message, based on its outbound route filtering policy.5. Security Considerations   This extension to BGP does not change the underlying security issues.6. Acknowledgments   The concept of Route Refresh proposed is similar to the one used in   IDRP.   The author would like to thank Yakov Rekhter, Ravi Chandra, Srihari   Ramachandra and Bruce Cole for their review and comments.7. References   [BGP-4]   Rekhter, Y. and T. Li, "A Border Gateway Protocol 4 (BGP-             4)", RFC 1771, March 1995.   [BGP-MP]  Bates, T., Chandra, R., Katz, D. and Y. Rekhter,             "Multiprotocol Extensions for BGP-4", RFC 2858, June 2000.   [BGP-CAP] Chandra, R. and J. Scudder, "Capabilities Advertisement             with BGP-4", RFC 2842, May 2000.8. Author's Address   Enke Chen   Redback Networks Inc.   350 Holger Way   San Jose, CA 95134   EMail: enke@redback.comChen                        Standards Track                     [Page 3]RFC 2918                Route Refresh for BGP-4           September 20009.  Full Copyright Statement   Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2000).  All Rights Reserved.   This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to   others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it   or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published   and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any   kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are   included on all such copies and derivative works.  However, this   document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing   the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other   Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of   developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for   copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be   followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than   English.   The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be   revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.   This document and the information contained herein is provided on an   "AS IS" basis and THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING   TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING   BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION   HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF   MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.Acknowledgement   Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the   Internet Society.Chen                        Standards Track                     [Page 4]