Solved: address-family ipv4 under BGP

alalli · ‎10-19-2005

Hi All,

I needed to configure address-family ipv4 under my bgp process in order to try and get unequal cost load-balancing up and running.

I noticed that this has changed the look of my bgp configuration quite a bit.

I still have all my bgp peers defined, described, and version 4 above the line; but then... below the address-family ipv4 i have all of the individual attributes for each peer.

Can anyone tell me what the differences are for running bgp with and without the ipv4-family command?

thanks ver much for your help

Harold Ritter · ‎10-20-2005

You don't necesseraly need to configure an address-family ipv4 as this is the default address family when you configure a neighbor in global BGP configuration mode. The address-family statement is only required when you need to run multiple address families.

If you only run ipv4 then you can configure everything in BGP global configuration mode.

Hope this helps,

Harold Ritter
Sr Technical Leader
CCIE 4168 (R&S, SP)
harold@cisco.com
México móvil: +52 1 55 8312 4915
Cisco México
Paseo de la Reforma 222
Piso 19
Cuauhtémoc, Juárez
Ciudad de México, 06600
México

View solution in original post

Harold Ritter · ‎10-20-2005

You don't necesseraly need to configure an address-family ipv4 as this is the default address family when you configure a neighbor in global BGP configuration mode. The address-family statement is only required when you need to run multiple address families.

If you only run ipv4 then you can configure everything in BGP global configuration mode.

Hope this helps,

Harold Ritter
Sr Technical Leader
CCIE 4168 (R&S, SP)
harold@cisco.com
México móvil: +52 1 55 8312 4915
Cisco México
Paseo de la Reforma 222
Piso 19
Cuauhtémoc, Juárez
Ciudad de México, 06600
México

alalli · ‎10-21-2005

Hi and thank you very much. I was hoping that you would say that.

As it turns out... the whole unequal BGP load balancing exercise got scrapped and I have removed both the multipath config and the link bandwidth commands.

I still have the ipv4 family command in the config though and it makes my configuration look a little different than it did before; but is doing no harm so i will leave alone for now.

I ended up load balancing the old fashioned way by dividing up my advertised address space and sending more specific advertisements towards my preferred provider.

thanks again for all of your help!!