BGP Aggregate as-set

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When advertising aggregates in BGP, it’s possible to specify the ‘as-set’ command as part of the aggregate.  This forces the BGP process to advertise the prefix with a list of AS numbers that make up the aggregate.  So let’s take our lab where we left it so I can show you what I mean…

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Let’s look at the BGP table on the ISP A routers before we do this…

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Note that the aggregate each ISP A router is injecting (175.15.0.0/18) does not list an AS-path.  That’s because each router is generating the prefix.  We can confirm this by looking at the upstreamISP router’s BGP table…

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Here you can see that the AS-path is set to 200 for the 175.15.0.0./18 prefix.  Now, let’s change things up and enable the ‘as-set’ command on the aggregate statement…

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Looking at the BGP table, we now see the AS-path is set to something completely different…

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Note that the AS-path lists {100,300}.  These are the two AS numbers that make up the aggregate.  That is, the /20 prefixes from AS 100 and 300 are what allow the aggregate to be advertised.  AS sets are treated as a single AS for AS-path length and can really only be used for loop prevention.  They can not be used for path determination. 

Now, let’s check out the upstreamISP router’s BGP table…

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Huh…  What could be wrong?  Well, without spending a lot of time troubleshooting, let me tell you what happens when you use the ‘as-set’ command.  The ‘as-set’ command will copy any communities from the prefixes that comprise the aggregate to the aggregate prefix.  In other words, this should help clear up the issue…

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From some previous labbing, I had left an outbound route-map on the ISP B and C routers that set the no-export community on the prefixes advertised up to ISP A.  When I configured the ‘as-set’ command, it got copied over to the aggregate which then does not get advertised to the upstreamISP. 

As luck would have it, there’s a creative way to fix this issue without removing the outbound route-map on ISP B and C.  Attribute maps are a way to set prefix attributes on aggregate prefixes.  Let’s configure them on the ISP A routers…

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Above I show the configuration on one of the routers.  Basically, I created a route-map that just set the community to none.  This will effectively clear any communities from the prefix the route-map is associated to.  I then added the attribute-map to the aggregate address command for the aggregate.  I made a similar configuration on the other.  Now, if we look at the upstreamISP router, we should see the prefixes are once again present…

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And there you have it!

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