BGP Labeled Unicast Next Hop Self in Route-Map

Overview

The BGP-LU next-hop-self in route map feature provides the ability set the local BGP peer as the next-hop for select BGP-LU routes. When such a route map is applied to a BGP-LU neighbor in the outbound direction, the matched routes will be updated as below:

The next-hop address is replaced with the local BGP peer address. Based on the BGP configuration, this is either the local interface address or the local loopback address
The label is replaced with the local label allocated for the prefix

Feature Characteristics

BGP-LU routes permitted by the route-map and configured with set ip next-hop self are advertised with the local BGP peer address as the next-hop and the locally assigned label. BGP-LU routes permitted by the route-map without set next-hop self are advertised with their original next-hop and the label remains unchanged. The BGP-LU routes denied by the route-map are not advertised.

Limitations

The existing route-map CLIs to set next-hop, such as, set ip next-hop a.b.c.d or set ip next-hop peer-address are not recommended to be used for this feature and they can impact adversely.

Prerequisites

While deploying BGP labelled unicast, ensure that the allocate-label command is enabled under router bgp mode. This command is required for allocating labels to IPv4 prefixes.