BMP
The BGP Monitoring Protocol (BMP) is designed to monitor BGP running status, such as BGP peer relationship establishment and termination and route updates.
Without BMP, manual query is required if you want to know about BGP running status. With BMP, a router can be connected to a monitoring server and configured to report BGP routing information, device vendor information and version, and BGP peer information to the server for monitoring, which improves the network monitoring efficiency. BMP facilitates the monitoring of BGP running status and reports security threats in real time so that preventive measures can be taken promptly.
BMP Messages
Routers send BMP packets carrying Initiation, Peer Up Notification (PU), Route Monitoring (RM), Peer Down Notification (PD), Status Report (SR), or Termination messages to the monitoring server to report BGP running statistics. The functions of these messages are listed as follows:
Initiation message: Reports to the monitoring server such information as the router vendor and its software version.
PU message: Notifies the monitoring server that a BGP peer relationship has been established.
RM message: Sends to the monitoring server all routes received from BGP peers and notifies the server of route addition or deletion in real time.
PD message: Notifies the monitoring server that a BGP peer has been disconnected.
SR message: Reports router running statistics to the monitoring server.
Termination message: Reports to the monitoring server the cause of BMP session termination.
BMP sessions are unidirectional. Routers send messages to the monitoring server but ignore messages replied by the server.
Implementation
In Figure 9-9, a TCP connection is established between the monitoring server and PE1 and between the monitoring server and PE2. PE1 and PE2 send unsolicited BMP packets to the monitoring server to report BGP running statistics. After receiving these BMP packets, the monitoring server parses them and displays the BGP running status in the monitoring view. The BMP packets carry headers. By analyzing the headers, the monitoring server can decide which BGP peers have advertised the routes carried in these packets.
When establishing a connection between a router and a monitoring server, note the following rules:
- You can specify a port for the TCP connection between the router and the monitoring server.
- One router can connect to multiple monitoring servers, and one monitoring server can also connect to multiple routers.
- In each BMP instance, one router can connect to multiple monitoring servers so that:
- Multiple monitoring servers back up each other, which improves reliability.
- The load of a single server in monitoring BGP peers is reduced.
- Each server can monitor BGP peers in a unique address family, allowing different BGP services to be controled.
- The monitoring server monitors all BGP peers. Specifying the BGP peer to be monitored is not supported.
