Customer Reviews

BGP Design and Implementation

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Randy Zhang and Micah Bartell's BGP Design and Implementation (ISBN: 1587051095, Cisco Press) is a new and welcome addition to Cisco Press's growing BGP library. Unlike previous BGP works, this book assumes that the reader already has a solid understanding of BGP theory and mechanics, and is geared for those people interested in real world BGP design, implementation, and management in enterprise and service provider networks. The book covers the following four major categories:

* Advanced BGP: Building Blocks, Performance Tuning, Policy Control
* Designing BGP Enterprise Networks: Core & Internet Connectivity
* Designing BGP Service Provider Networks: iBGP, Route Reflection & Confederations, and Service Provider Architecture
* Implementing BGP Multiprotocol Extensions: MPLS VPN, Multicast, IPv6

As the title suggests, BGP Design and Implementation goes into the depths of what to consider when implementing or managing a large BGP network. It is not for the casual reader as it is filled with large-scale design theory, and unless you are actually working with BGP at this level, it will be mostly an academic exercise and can drag on at times. Other foundational BGP theory books such as Halabi's Internet Routing Architectures will be a better fit for the CCNP/CCIE student. On the other hand, if the reader does or is contemplating using BGP at the enterprise or service provider level, this is an excellent resource to read and keep as a reference.

The real value of this book is in the practical configuration designs that the authors propose based off of their experiences. For example, the explanation of BGP memory and CPU tuning based on small packet handling efficiency is not only surprisingly informative, but Zhang and Bartell solidify their theory by providing benchmark results. Not to be misunderstood, there is plenty of "theory" in this book, but it normally prefaces a case study that ties the practical to the theoretical. It was good to see examples of a BGP implementation at the enterprise core instead of merely seeing ISP connectivity examples, although there is plenty of information in that area as well. The service provider section of the book proves to be interesting, going into examples of how providers more commonly use route reflectors, or how transit and peering connectivity is controlled, but it seems that the authors are writing more to the enterprise customer than they are to the service provider. Perhaps they do this so the enterprise customer can have a better understanding of the carrier network. From a provider perspective, much of the information seems basic and would not be new to an experienced network engineer. It's in the final section of BGP extensions regarding MPLS VPN's, multicast, and IPv6, that the information presented might be of additional value to the service provider engineer. The typical customer might be more accustomed of thinking about VPN's in terms of IPSec and IKE, or simple static rendezvous points for multicast. It's interesting to see how BGP can help expand these concepts into a broader scale, spreading across disparate networks and protocols.

If you have the proper expectations before reading the book, there really aren't that many drawbacks to the book itself. The majority of the information is not a repeat from previous works on BGP, and there is a good amount of practical examples and case studies. There aren't a lot of straight IOS config examples, but rather much of the conversation stays at the design level, which if you're the type of person that prefers to actually see the CLI commands, this can be frustrating at times. It's also questionable as to how valuable the third section of the book (service provider networks) would be to actual experienced service providers, but from an enterprise customer perspective, it is very informative. To the casual reader and someone not very familiar with BGP, this book will most likely prove to be much too boring and technically challenging. Perhaps a subtitle of "Enterprise and Service Provider Networks" would have better clarified the scope of the book.

BGP Design and Implementation is an excellent resource for people serious about BGP, and it is even more helpful to those actually working with BGP as it provides useful, practical design and tuning models.

I would just like to add my comments to the list of reviews: if you work with BGP this book is essential! What makes this book unique is that it is intended for the real-world, production environment engineer, with outstanding results. Personally, I have used this book on two major projects with excellent results; I am sure I would not have been able to find this type of information, knowledge in any single place - if at all - since as another reviewer noted, it distills years of practical experience into a well organized, accessible format. Again, my thanks to Mssrs. Zhang and Bartell for a truly outstanding, practical book that has saved me hours of work, research. Highly recommended!!

This book answered so many questions I had about how the Internet works and how enterprises can use BGP in their networks. The writing style is clear and a pleasure to read. I did not notice any errors or typos. This is one of the best Cisco Press books I've read. The material covered is a logical extension (fill-the-gaps) for the knowledge one gains when studying BGP as part of the CCNP/CCDP BSCI exam. The case studies for enterprise BGP core design and Internet connectivity were one of the most interesting and useful real-world scenarios one can strive to implement. Same for the service provider examples. One caution however, this is not "beginner" material. One would greatly benefit from having a CCNP-level understanding of BGP prior to attacking this book.

Advanced BGP Design and Implementation (Zhang, Bartell Cisco Press, 2004, ISBN 1-58705-109-5) is a great book on advanced BGP concepts.

There are a few chapters at the beginning that cover the history and basics of BGP. Then it dives right into the settings and tuning of BGP. This book is not for the faint of heart as it kicks in quick with in depth coverage of all that is BGP. You definitely want to have a good solid understanding of BGP basics before reading this book.

You should consider reading other BGP reference books first such as Sam Halabi's Internet Routing Architectures, William Parkhurst's Cisco BGP 4 Command and Configuration Handbook (Cisco Press, 2001) and various Cisco whitepapers and BGP design documents from their website. It will definitely help you to absorb more of this book and will give you a good basis to then get into the fine-tuning aspects of BGP.

The book covers many of the advanced BGP topics that you would normally have to dig for in RFC's and various other resources and books. This is a great reference book to keep on the shelf and have handy (once you have read it a few times first of course). I personally enjoyed the extensive coverage of BGP policy enforcement in chapter 4, which is critical to getting the most out of BGP. Also there was great coverage of multi protocol BGP and Inter-AS VPN's with MPLS as it relates to BGP. This is a topic of great interest today for those looking at label switching for logical separation and/or for traffic engineering.

Other topics of interest included IPv6, Interdomain Multicast and scaling BGP using confederations and route reflectors, and merging BGP autonomous systems. It was great to learn of the memory requirements implemented on Cisco routers. This was something that has always been a concern for many people with older routers and various memory and flash constraints.

I found the diagrams and examples to be extremely valuable. The authors explained very nicely topics that often are difficult to understand or grasp. Their examples portrayed real world scenarios, which made it even easier to relate to and to understand. Always helpful to have something that you can apply to your particular situation or job function.

I would say due to the granularity of detail covered in this book, it is geared more towards large enterprise backbones and Internet Service Provider backbones.

This is a great resource to have, especially if you want to delve into the inner workings and mysteries of BGP.

I recently read the book titled "BGP Design and Implementation" by Randy Zhang and Micah Bartell. ISBN: 1587051095. In my opinion, this title is a magnificent compliment to two other great titles from Cisco Press, "Internet Routing Architectures", by Sam Halabi, ISBN: 157870233X and we mustn't forget the other great title "Cisco BGP-4 Command and Configuration Handbook" by William Parkhurst, ISBN: 158705017X. Each title has it's own strengths, but "BGP Design and Implementation" is a great hybrid of the two former titles on BGP.

This book covers information that is either extremely hard to find, privileged information or it just hadn't been documented yet. This book gives you the knobs to turn, to tune BGP into everything it can be.

I think the book is laid out very well. The authors do a great job of laying down foundational information on the subjects that are discussed in later chapters. The book starts off and goes 0 to 60 in about two chapters. Advanced topics and issues are discussed first, so the reader is not left in the dust when the more complex topics and details are covered.

There are some great tip pertaining to BGP convergence tuning. The chapter is very well documented with several supporting examples. Some of the sections give great detail and are easily understood, but there are no command examples of how to implement the information. For example, TCP tuning is well documented, but there is no information on how to change the Maximum Segment Size on a router. Another great section pertains to how to leverage a feature in OSPF so that OSPF is aware of BGP. Unfortunately, the feature appears to be limited to a special IOS release. So certain sections would require the reader to either know how to implement the information or to look up the related commands to implement the information.

The book contains information on everything from building a BGP network Core to Load Balancing in a Multihome Environment. It focuses on how to make BGP scalable and how to configure BGP to maximize performance. Making this book essential for any Networking Professional that has or will deploy BGP. There are more tips and suggestions on architectural considerations than any other reference I've seen relating to the implementation of BGP.

The use of confederations, Route Reflectors and VPN/MPLS are well documented and studied in this book. The Authors have done a wonderful job of explaining the challenges of using Route Reflectors and Confederations and even how to migrate the two. These topics are very complex in nature, yet the books explanations and supporting diagrams are easy to follow, turning a complex issue into a manageable one.
The book has several supporting diagrams and tables that reinforce the author's message. I found the diagrams to be easy to follow and understand. Most all of the commands that are listed in the book have examples of output and highlighting to help weed through the output information and draw out the points.

A good portion of the book relates to the Internet Service Providers use of the BGP protocol. I say about half the book covers ISP related material and the other half for the Enterprise Engineer that want to get a good handle on BGP and make it scale.

This book is best suited for Intermediate to Expert Networking professionals. Because of it's heavy information on ISP related features, I'd say that Networking Professionals in the ISP space would get the most bang out of this book, not to count out the Enterprise folks though. This book has a wealth of information that can help the Enterprise professionals take a BGP implementation to the next level or perhaps fine tune the protocol to get maximum performance.

BGP Design and Implementation (ISBN: 1-58705-109-5, Cisco Press) is a must-have for anyone who works with BGP on a regular basis. Whereas other books explain BGP operation, this book goes to the next step in explaining design issues for both enterprise and service provider networks. This is an advanced book, and assumes a fundamental understanding of BGP operation. This is evidenced by the first chapter alone, titled Advanced BGP Introduction. If you are looking for a book that goes beyond explaining BGP routing and dives into the intricacies and real-world concerns of using BGP, then this is the book to buy.

In the first part of the book, Randy Zhang (Ph.D., CCIE) and Micah Bartell (CCIE) offer general tips on tuning BGP performance and BGP policies, including how to determine memory requirements, convergence tuning, and queuing performance. Next, in part II, Zhang and Bartell explain design recommendations for BGP enterprise networks. There are plenty of configuration examples and diagrams to illustrate such advanced concepts as multihoming, route filtering, and load-balancing. As anyone who works with BGP in the enterprise knows, configuring load-balancing and route filtering can be a complex task; BGP Design and Implementation clarifies the issues and makes configuration easy. This section concludes with a relevant case study that, unlike most case studies on BGP that fall short of representing real networks, actually portrays situations that one may encounter in a live network. In part III, the authors address common issues in service provider networks. Specifically, route reflectors and confederations are compared in regards to their usage among service providers. These technologies are used to address scalability issues, a common concern for anyone who manages a large service provider network. Because of the varied migration methods in working with route reflectors and confederations, the authors provide four different case studies. As an added bonus, there is a case study in how to prevent denial-of-service attacks against service provider networks. With nine pages of configuration examples at the end of this chapter, this is the most detailed example of preventing DoS attacks that I have ever seen. In part IV, Zhang and Bartell detail the BGP multiprotocol extensions and how they are being used for MPLS VPNs, multicasting, and IPv6. In appendix A, MBGP extensions for CLNS is covered. Throughout the book are countless configuration examples to aid in understanding the advanced BGP topics.

There are few books parallel to the detail provided in this book. Until now, network engineers in service provider and enterprise networks had to rely on experience alone to teach them how to properly deploy BGP. Now, Zhang and Bartell have condensed years of experience and expertise into a single source. Both Zhang and Bartell work for Cisco Systems; Zhang works with Cisco strategic service provider and enterprise customers, while Bartell is a member of the ISP Experts team. It is definitely written for an advanced audience who are already familiar with the workings of BGP, but for those who work with BGP on a regular basis, this is an invaluable resource.

I purchased this book both to supplant my knowledge of BGP and as a resource for my CCIE studies. I found the book to be of value more towards practical implementations of BGP. This book is geared toward a high-level architecture - not if only needing to design a 10 node BGP community. One down side is there are not that many configs. On the flip side, nearly every page either has a diagram or show output. One chapter of value is Chapter 8, which focuses on Route Reflection and Confederations. The book also makes good use of Regular Expressions (pg 110) and route conditions - something that is sorely missing in CiscoPress cannon. The last few chapters dive into support for multiprotocol extensions (MPLS VPNs and IPv6). While, upon reflection, I don't believe this book is a necessary tool for the CCIE, it is certainly a book worthy of it's title.

I give this book 4 pings out of 5:
!!!.!

Definitely not a beginners book for BGP, if you want to learn BGP from the ground up, look toward Routing TCP/IP Volume II, then continue to this book. This book goes into great detail on how BGP works and how it configured to work better.

A definite read for anyone pursuing CCIP or CCIE certification, or if you work with BGP and need to get a deeper knowledge of it's workings.

We can say that this book is quite old (2004) compared to all the recent documentation that you can find somewhere on the internet.
With that being said, we can also say that BGP didnt really evolved since and I can assure you that this book is a must read to understand BGP.
I guess you will need some fundamentals to start the book because you are directly jumping into the core of BGP (Advanced BGP introduction)


You ll learn the different attributes of course (Simple review) and the way that the Control plane and Data planes are handled with BGP. Then the authors teach you how to improve the performance of this protocol. The approach is great because it cames with some nice example ! The case study are also very usefull !



The Part II and III are focusing the way to design your BGP networks in both enterprise and ISP domain (The route reflector/Confederation part is so great for ISP guys but also for enterprise you that wanna dig deeper


You will find 4 cases studies into this part. I have never went that deep into my CCIE RS studies for sure !

The book is ending with MP BGP (MPLS VPN,IPV6,Multicast part)

it's missing some recent features of BGP like next hop tracking but this is just a very small part of BGP so it's not a big deal,


Honestly this is the best book to read if you want some Advanced BGP understanding.

This is a great book on advanced BGP design and implementation. As another reviewer mentioned this is not an introductory text to BGP so make sure you read through Internet Routing Architectures or the BGP section of Routing TCP/IP vol. 2 prior to this book.