[c-nsp] Memory exhaustion causing BGP sessions to randomly fail

[Drew Weaver]

    Is it plausable that memory exhaustion on a 12000 series router can
cause bgp sessions to seemingly at random start opening/closing.
 
Let me give you an example.
 
Today we had an issue where one of our interfaces (a 100mbps interface)
was getting DDOS attacked, the router was trying to push 300Mbps down a
100Mbps interface.
 
During this time, the bgp session with one of our upstream providers
would:
 
Close with:
 
Feb  9 10:44:28.196 EST: %BGP-5-ADJCHANGE: neighbor x.x.x.x Down BGP
Notification sent
Feb  9 10:44:28.196 EST: %BGP-3-NOTIFICATION: sent to neighbor x.x.x.x
4/0 (hold time expired) 0 bytes
 
then it would open with:
 
Feb  9 10:45:54.000 EST: %BGP-5-ADJCHANGE: neighbor x.x.x.x Up
 
recieve approximately 30000 out of 206900 routes
 
then close again.
 
This happened repeatedly until the traffic on said fastethernet
interface was mitigated.
 
I did not notice a log message stating why specifically the sessions
were dying, nor did i see anything where it appeared to be out of RAM.
 
Has anyone experienced a similar issue on a 12k router?
 
thank you,
-Drew