Revisiting Recommended BGP Route Flap Damping Configurations

Abstract

BGP Route Flap Damping (RFD) is recommended to suppress BGP churn. Current configuration recommendations for RFD, however, are based on a study from 2010. Since then, BGP churn increased by one order of magnitude, which may lead to outdated RFD parameters and introduce more loss of reachability of stable networks. In this paper, we revisit current recommendations to configure RFD. Our contributions are threefold. First, we successfully reproduce the 2010 measurement study that justified the current RFD recommendations using current data. Second, we consider the RFD implementation of an additional major router vendor (Juniper), which penalizes BGP churn differently compared to the previously studied Cisco implementation. Third, we include IPv6 data from 2020. Our results show that the recommended RFD configuration parameters from 2010, though seemingly rarely used, still hold today in IPv4 and IPv6 and across vendors, even though BGP churn increased significantly. Our study revises metrics to assess the impact of incorrectly configured RFD, discusses collateral damage, and gives insights into sweet spots when damping routes.

Publication
Proc. of Network Traffic Measurement and Analysis Conference (TMA)
Clemens Mosig
Clemens Mosig
PhD candidate / Earth System Data Science

PhD student in Earth System Data Science.