MP-BGP and Address Families

BGP originally only supports normal IPv4 unicast prefixes. With the passage of time & advancement in Network Technology, the need for support of more prefix types arose. There were two solutions to this problem: First, to invent a whole new protocol or a new version of BGP, Second, to add the extra functionality in the existing BGP. Of course, we chose the second one due to its flexibility & backward compatibility. Hence, MP-BGP came into existence under RFC4760 (https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4760) in 2007. MP-BGP supported more than 15 different BGP address families and it solved the problem. Nowadays MP-BGP (Multiprotocol BGP) is a Read More …