BGP Route Troubleshooting & Path Optimization
Diagnose BGP issues and optimize routing policies for enterprise networks
What You Can Do
You can diagnose BGP route propagation failures, analyze path selection decisions, and design optimized routing policies for ISP and enterprise networks. This skill helps you identify route leaks, recommend AS-PATH and community-based policy changes, and evaluate failover paths to minimize convergence time and traffic loss during outages.
Features
Diagnose propagation failures, convergence delays, and adjacency issues across AS boundaries
Evaluate alternative paths using AS-PATH prepending, communities, and MED tuning
Create inbound/outbound filter policies to prevent route leaks and enforce prefix constraints
Apply prepending and stripping strategies to control traffic flow without changing AS numbers
Implement RFC 1997 and extended communities for granular policy control
Identify unintended advertisements and trace leaks back to their origin point
Verify BGP configurations against business requirements, SLAs, and compliance rules
Estimate convergence time and traffic impact when primary paths fail
Example Output
Route Propagation Diagnosis:
Prefix: 203.0.113.0/24
Origin AS: AS65001
Observed behavior: Seen in AS65002, NOT in AS65003
Root cause: Export filter on AS65002→AS65003 peer blocking this prefix.
Recommendation: Add permit statement for 203.0.113.0/24 to export policy on AS65002's eBGP session to AS65003.
Path Optimization Recommendation:
Current primary: AS65001→AS65002→AS65003 (80ms)
Backup path: AS65001→AS65004→AS65003 (120ms)
Strategy: Prepend AS65001 twice on primary path advertisement to AS65004.
Result: Traffic shifts to backup; convergence ~60 seconds. Implement local preference value 150 on primary if you need to keep primary active.
What's Included
- SKILL.md: Complete BGP troubleshooting workflows, decision trees, and diagnostic checklists
- Configuration templates: Pre-built BGP policy examples (Cisco IOS, Juniper, Arista)
- Route analysis checklist: Step-by-step guide to investigate propagation issues
- Policy validation worksheet: Requirement-to-policy mapping for compliance verification
- Failover impact calculator: Spreadsheet to model convergence time and traffic shift
- Community reference guide: Standard community tags and their meanings
- Filter design playbook: Patterns for prefix filtering, leak prevention, and policy enforcement
Who It's For
- ISP network engineers and routing specialists
- Enterprise network architects designing multi-AS topologies
- Network operations centers (NOC) responding to routing incidents
- Cloud infrastructure engineers managing BGP-based failover
- Service provider engineers optimizing customer connectivity
Best For
- Diagnosing route propagation failures and blocked prefixes
- Optimizing BGP policies to improve latency and traffic balance
- Designing and validating failover paths and convergence strategies
- Detecting and remediating route leaks to unauthorized peers
- Implementing traffic engineering policies using AS-PATH and communities
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