Establishing parallel EBGP sessions across parallel links between two edge routers (EBGP peers) – as displayed in the diagram below – is the most versatile form of EBGP load balancing. It does not require static routing or extra routing protocol (like the design running EBGP between routers’ loopback interfaces), device-specific tricks like configuring the same IP address on multiple interfaces) or specific layer-2 encapsulation (like Ethernet LAG or Multilink PPP).

It even allows proportional load-balancing across unequal-bandwidth links and combinations of various layer-2 technologies (for example, load-balancing between a serial line and an Ethernet interface). The only drawback of this design is the increased size of the BGP table, as every BGP prefix is received from the EBGP neighbor twice.

Benefits

• No extra routing protocol between EBGP neighbors
• Reliably detects link and node failures
• No IP addressing tricks
• No dependency on layer-2 transport technology
• Load balancing proportional to link bandwidth

Drawbacks

• Duplicate entries in the BGP table increase memory requirements
• Additional BGP session and larger BGP table increases CPU utilization

Basic configuration

To implement parallel EBGP sessions, configure multiple neighbors on both EBGP routers, one for each IP subnet (parallel link between the EBGP peers) and enable EBGP multipath load balancing with the maximum-paths router configuration command. Sample router configurations are shown below:

hostname PE-A
!
interface Loopback0
 ip address 10.0.1.1 255.255.255.255
!
interface Serial1/4
 description Link #1 to PE-B
 bandwidth 1000
 ip address 10.0.7.37 255.255.255.252
 encapsulation ppp
!
interface Serial1/5
 description Link #2 to PE-B
 bandwidth 4000
 ip address 10.0.7.45 255.255.255.252
 encapsulation ppp
!
router bgp 65000
 no synchronization
 bgp log-neighbor-changes
 neighbor 10.0.7.38 remote-as 65001
 neighbor 10.0.7.46 remote-as 65001
 maximum-paths 8

hostname PE-B
!
interface Loopback0
 ip address 10.0.1.5 255.255.255.255
!
interface Serial1/0
 description Link #1 to PE-A
 bandwidth 1000
 ip address 10.0.7.38 255.255.255.252
 encapsulation ppp
!
interface Serial1/1
 description Link #2 to PE-A
 bandwidth 4000
 ip address 10.0.7.46 255.255.255.252
 encapsulation ppp
!
router bgp 65001
 no synchronization
 bgp log-neighbor-changes
 neighbor 10.0.7.37 remote-as 65000
 neighbor 10.0.7.45 remote-as 65000
 maximum-paths 8

After the neighbors have been configured, inspect the BGP neighbor table with the show ip bgp summary command. All parallel sessions should be operational.

PE-A#show ip bgp summary | begin Neighbor
Neighbor        V    AS MsgRcvd MsgSent   TblVer  InQ OutQ Up/Down  State/PfxRcd
10.0.7.38       4 65001       4       4        2    0    0 00:01:24        1
10.0.7.46       4 65001       4       4        2    0    0 00:01:24        1

Check the prefixes advertised by the EBGP peer with the show ip bgp prefix and show ip route prefix commands:

PE-A#show ip bgp 10.2.2.0
BGP routing table entry for 10.2.2.0/24, version 2
Paths: (2 available, best #1, table default)
Multipath: eBGP iBGP
Flag: 0x1820
  Advertised to update-groups:
     1
  65001
    10.0.7.38 from 10.0.7.38 (10.0.1.5)
      Origin IGP, metric 0, localpref 100, valid, external, multipath, best
  65001
    10.0.7.46 from 10.0.7.46 (10.0.1.5)
      Origin IGP, metric 0, localpref 100, valid, external, multipath

PE-A#show ip route 10.2.2.0
Routing entry for 10.2.2.0/24
  Known via "bgp 65000", distance 20, metric 0
  Tag 65001, type external
  Last update from 10.0.7.46 00:00:10 ago
  Routing Descriptor Blocks:
    10.0.7.46, from 10.0.7.46, 00:00:10 ago
      Route metric is 0, traffic share count is 1
      AS Hops 1
      Route tag 65001
  * 10.0.7.38, from 10.0.7.38, 00:00:10 ago
      Route metric is 0, traffic share count is 1
      AS Hops 1
      Route tag 65001

Bandwidth-proportional load balancing

Configure DMZ Link Bandwidth feature to enable load balancing proportional to the bandwidth of the parallel links:

• Configure neighbor ip-address dmzlink-bw on all EBGP sessions with the EBGP peer router.
• Configure proportional load sharing with the bgp dmzlink-bw router configuration command.

Modifications to the PE-A router configuration are shown below:

router bgp 65000
 bgp dmzlink-bw
 neighbor 10.0.7.38 dmzlink-bw
 neighbor 10.0.7.46 dmzlink-bw

After you’ve enabled the DMZ Link Bandwidth feature, you have to clear the EBGP sessions with the clear ip bgp address soft in command. As before, you can check the load balancing behavior with the show ip bgp prefix and show ip route prefix commands.

PE-A#show ip bgp 10.2.2.0
BGP routing table entry for 10.2.2.0/24, version 7
Paths: (2 available, best #2, table default)
Multipath: eBGP iBGP
Flag: 0x1820
  Advertised to update-groups:
     1
  65001
    10.0.7.46 from 10.0.7.46 (10.0.1.5)
      Origin IGP, metric 0, localpref 100, valid, external, multipath
      DMZ-Link Bw 500 kbytes
  65001
    10.0.7.38 from 10.0.7.38 (10.0.1.5)
      Origin IGP, metric 0, localpref 100, valid, external, multipath, best
      DMZ-Link Bw 125 kbytes

PE-A#show ip route 10.2.2.0
Routing entry for 10.2.2.0/24
  Known via "bgp 65000", distance 20, metric 0
  Tag 65001, type external
  Last update from 10.0.7.38 00:00:43 ago
  Routing Descriptor Blocks:
  * 10.0.7.46, from 10.0.7.46, 00:00:43 ago
      Route metric is 0, traffic share count is 240
      AS Hops 1
      Route tag 65001
    10.0.7.38, from 10.0.7.38, 00:00:43 ago
      Route metric is 0, traffic share count is 59
      AS Hops 1
      Route tag 65001