Reference Guide

and AS300. This is advertised to all routers within AS100, causing all BGP speakers to prefer the path
through Router B.
Figure 25. BGP Local Preference
Multi-Exit Discriminators (MEDs)
If two ASs connect in more than one place, a multi-exit discriminator (MED) can be used to assign a
preference to a preferred path.
MED is one of the criteria used to determine the best path, so keep in mind that other criteria may impact
selection, as shown in the illustration in Best Path Selection Criteria.
One AS assigns the MED a value and the other AS uses that value to decide the preferred path. For this
example, assume the MED is the only attribute applied. In the following illustration, AS100 and AS200
connect in two places. Each connection is a BGP session. AS200 sets the MED for its T1 exit point to 100
and the MED for its OC3 exit point to 50. This sets up a path preference through the OC3 link. The MEDs
are advertised to AS100 routers so they know which is the preferred path.
MEDs are non-transitive attributes. If AS100 sends an MED to AS200, AS200 does not pass it on to AS300
or AS400. The MED is a locally relevant attribute to the two participating ASs (AS100 and AS200).
NOTE: The MEDs are advertised across both links, so if a link goes down, AS 1 still has connectivity
to AS300 and AS400.
Border Gateway Protocol IPv4 (BGPv4)
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