[c-nsp] BGP KEEPALIVE maximum frequency

[Keegan Holley]

On Sun, Dec 5, 2010 at 3:41 AM, M. V. <bored_to_death85 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> hi Pete! hi Keegan!
>
> > I see that you're "bored to death",
>
> yeah, i see your point! :)
>
> > but is it really essential to be the RFC police on an operations list?
> > is it breaking anything for you?
>
> i'm completely with you bro. but the thing is, i'm doing a research/survey
> on
> "RFC Conformance" of different routers (like Cisco, ...) for different
> dynamic
> routing protocols (BGP, OSPF, RIP, ...). i've got the results of
> conformance
> tests of Cisco (and some other routers) with Spirent and now i'm trying to
> analyze the result (and find the reasons of various FAILs and explain the
> incompatibilities) and see through it .
> it's part of my job and i'm getting paid for it. i know these things are
> not
> important at all, but apparently some people don't! 'cause i know some
> offices
> that need "Conformance Certificate" for a router in order to buy and use
> it!!!).
>

I think this is a very worth while goal especially in a multivendor network.
 The various vendors decide to break the RFC rules for many reasons.
 Sometimes it's just buggy code other times it can be a feature requested by
customers.  Cisco is probably a special case since more often than not the
RFC changes to suit what cisco implemented instead of vice-versa.

BGP is a TCP based protocol as well, is it possible that these were just
retransmissions cause by some sort of error in your lab setup?  If it is a
bug have you tried the test on multiple platforms and multiple versions of
IOS?  If I had to guess I would say that the BGP process may start before
the actual layer2/3/4 path is ready to carry the control traffic so sending
multiple keepalives is a way to overcome delays in things like arp or even
LSP establishment or something I've missed.  But this is obviously pure
speculation though so YMMV.

>
>
> i didn't find any good mailing-list about cisco other than this, to answer
> these
> types of questions (maybe you know one?).
>

You may find better luck on one of the news groups on cisco's website or
somewhere like NANOG.  There may even be an IETF list devoted to BGP, I've
found lists for L2 and L3vpn that are can answer these sorts of things.
 Have you asked your account team or reseller?  You can sometimes get
results by threatening to stop buying things, but this only works a few
times so tread lightly. : )

>
> sorry to bother you all, but the payment is good :)
>

No worries.  I have spent weekends doing things much closer to the threshold
of pointlessness than this.  I am personally interested in the answer to
this.

Keegan