Concept Guide

Setting the extended timer
To congure BGP idle hold time, use the following commands.
Timer values congured with the neighbor timers extended command override the timer values congured with the timers bgp
extended command.
The peer remains in idle state based on the congured idle-holdtime. The less the idle-holdtime, lesser the peer remains in idle
state.
NOTE: For the new idle-holdtime to take eect, you need to shutdown the respective peer manually using neighbor
shutdown command and enable the peer again.
• Congure idle-holdtime values for a BGP neighbor or peer group.
CONFIG-ROUTER-BGP mode
neighbors {ip-address | ipv6-address | peer-group-name} timers extended idle-holdtime
idle-holdtime: the range is from 1 to 32767. Time interval, in seconds, during which the peer remains in idle state. The default is 15
seconds.
• Congure idle-holdtime values for all BGP neighbors.
CONFIG-ROUTER-BGP mode
timers bgp extended idle holdtime
idle-holdtime: the range is from 1 to 32767. Time interval, in seconds, during which the peer remains in idle state. The default is 15
seconds
.
Enabling BGP Neighbor Soft-Reconguration
BGP soft-reconguration allows for faster and easier route changing.
Changing routing policies typically requires a reset of BGP sessions (the TCP connection) for the policies to take eect. Such resets cause
undue interruption to trac due to hard reset of the BGP cache and the time it takes to re-establish the session. BGP soft recong allows
for policies to be applied to a session without clearing the BGP Session. Soft-recong can be done on a per-neighbor basis and can either
be inbound or outbound.
BGP soft-reconguration clears the policies without resetting the TCP connection.
To reset a BGP connection using BGP soft reconguration, use the clear ip bgp command in EXEC Privilege mode at the system
prompt.
When you enable soft-reconguration for a neighbor and you execute the clear ip bgp soft in command, the update database
stored in the router is replayed and updates are reevaluated. With this command, the replay and update process is triggered only if a route-
refresh request is not negotiated with the peer. If the request is indeed negotiated (after execution of
clear ip bgp soft in), BGP
sends a route-refresh request to the neighbor and receives all of the peer’s updates.
To use soft reconguration (or soft reset) without preconguration, both BGP peers must support the soft route refresh capability, which is
advertised in the open message sent when the peers establish a TCP session.
To determine whether a BGP router supports this capability, use the show ip bgp neighbors command. If a router supports the
route refresh capability, the following message displays:
Received route refresh capability from peer.
If you specify a BGP peer group by using the peer-group-name argument, all members of the peer group inherit the characteristic
congured with this command.
Border Gateway Protocol IPv4 (BGPv4)
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