BGP MED routing decision - Always-compare-med

MED (Multi-Exit Discriminator) is used to influence routing decision. By default, a router which receives MED attribute from neighbors, only compares it if they are coming from the same AS. As you can see in the diagram below:

• R3 send to R4 a MED of 50 for subnet 172.16.1.0/24
• R2 send to R5 a MED of 100 for subnet 172.16.1.0/24
• The lowest MED is the preferred path

In a first step, the configuration below has been applied:

R1:

interface Loopback1

ip address 172.16.1.1 255.255.255.0

router bgp 50

bgp log-neighbor-changes

network 172.16.1.0 mask 255.255.255.0

neighbor 10.1.1.2 remote-as 100

neighbor 10.1.3.3 remote-as 200

R2:

router bgp 100

bgp log-neighbor-changes

neighbor 10.1.1.1 remote-as 50

neighbor 10.1.2.3 remote-as 200

neighbor 10.1.4.4 remote-as 300

neighbor 10.1.4.4 route-map MED out

!

access-list 1 permit 172.16.1.0 0.0.0.255

!

route-map MED permit 10

match ip address 1

set metric 100

!

route-map MED permit 20

R3:

router bgp 200

bgp log-neighbor-changes

neighbor 10.1.2.2 remote-as 100

neighbor 10.1.3.1 remote-as 50

neighbor 10.1.5.4 remote-as 300

neighbor 10.1.5.4 route-map MED out

!

access-list 1 permit 172.16.1.0 0.0.0.255

!

route-map MED permit 10

match ip address 1

set metric 50

!

route-map MED permit 20

R4:

router bgp 300

bgp log-neighbor-changes

neighbor 10.1.4.2 remote-as 100

neighbor 10.1.5.3 remote-as 200

MED is seen in R4 but R4 set R2 has next-hop. R4 doesn't compare MED because information is coming from 2 different ASs. R2 is used due to the fact that he has the lowest Router-id 10.1.4.2.

R4#sho ip bgp 172.16.1.0

BGP routing table entry for 172.16.1.0/24, version 2

Paths: (2 available, best #1, table default)

  Advertised to update-groups:

     3

  Refresh Epoch 1

  100 50

    10.1.4.2 from 10.1.4.2 (10.1.4.2)

      Origin IGP, metric 100, localpref 100, valid, external, best

  Refresh Epoch 1

  200 50

    10.1.5.3 from 10.1.5.3 (10.1.5.3)

      Origin IGP, metric 50, localpref 100, valid, external

Now, we add the command 'bgp always-compare-med' on R4:

R4:

router bgp 300

bgp always-compare-med

As you can, R4 has now choosen R3 for the next-hop. MED is used:

R4#sho ip bgp 172.16.1.0

BGP routing table entry for 172.16.1.0/24, version 2

Paths: (2 available, best #1, table default)

  Advertised to update-groups:

     4

  Refresh Epoch 1

  200 50

    10.1.5.3 from 10.1.5.3 (10.1.5.3)

      Origin IGP, metric 50, localpref 100, valid, external, best

  Refresh Epoch 1

  100 50

    10.1.4.2 from 10.1.4.2 (10.1.4.2)

      Origin IGP, metric 100, localpref 100, valid, external