The Effects of iBGP Convergence
Abstract
Analyzing violations of forwarding properties is a classic networking problem. However, existing work is either tailored to the steady state—and not to transient states during iBGP convergence—or does analyze transient violations but with inaccurate proxies, like control-plane convergence, or without precise control over the different impact factors. We address this gap with a measurement framework that controllably and accurately measures transient violation times in realistic network deployments. The framework relies on a programmable switch to flexibly emulate diverse topologies and gain traffic visibility at all links—enabling accurately inferring violation times of any forwarding property. Using the framework, we analyze 50 network scenarios on a topology with 12 real routers, and show how factors like the network configuration and BGP event affect transient violation times. Further, we shed light on less-known aspects of BGP convergence, including that transient violations can start before the trigger event, or that keeping a backup route advertised at all times can increase violation times.
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BibTex
@article{effects-ibgp-convergence-abs/2503.15249,
author = {Roland Schmid and Tibor Schneider and Georgia Fragkouli and Laurent Vanbever},
title = {The Effects of iBGP Convergence},
journal = {CoRR},
volume = {abs/2503.15249},
year = {2025},
url = {http://arxiv.org/abs/2503.15249},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
eprint = {2503.15249}
}