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The order of comparison determined by Part 2 is important because the comparison operation is not transitive;
that is, if three paths, A, B, and C exist, such that when A and B are compared, A is better, and when B and
C are compared, B is better, it is not necessarily the case that when A and C are compared, A is better. This
nontransitivity arises because the multi exit discriminator (MED) is compared only among paths from the
same neighboring autonomous system (AS) and not among all paths.
Note
Comparing Pairs of Paths
Perform the following steps to compare two paths and determine the better path:
1.
If either path is invalid (for example, a path has the maximum possible MED value or it has an
unreachable next hop), then the other path is chosen (provided that the path is valid).
2.
If the paths have unequal pre-bestpath cost communities, the path with the lower pre-bestpath cost
community is selected as the best path.
3.
If the paths have unequal weights, the path with the highest weight is chosen.
The weight is entirely local to the router, and can be set with the
weight
command or using a routing policy.
Note
4.
If the paths have unequal local preferences, the path with the higher local preference is chosen.
If a local preference attribute was received with the path or was set by a routing policy, then that value is used
in this comparison. Otherwise, the default local preference value of 100 is used. The default value can be
changed using the
bgp default local-preference
command.
Note
5.
If one of the paths is a redistributed path, which results from a
redistribute
or
network
command, then
it is chosen. Otherwise, if one of the paths is a locally generated aggregate, which results from an
aggregate-address
command, it is chosen.
Step 1 through Step 4 implement the “Path Selection with BGP”of RFC 1268.
Note
6.
If the paths have unequal AS path lengths, the path with the shorter AS path is chosen. This step is
skipped if
bgp bestpath as-path ignore
command is configured.
When calculating the length of the AS path, confederation segments are ignored, and AS sets count as 1.
Note
eiBGP specifies internal and external BGP multipath peers. eiBGP allows simultaneous use of internal and
external paths.
Note
Routing Configuration Guide for Cisco NCS 6000 Series Routers, IOS XR Release 6.4.x
26
Implementing BGP
Comparing Pairs of Paths