BGP Environment Test

BGP is an exterior gateway protocol (EGP) that is used to exchange routing information among routers in different autonomous systems (ASs). BGP routing information includes the complete route to each destination. BGP uses the routing information to maintain a database of network reachability information, which it exchanges with other BGP systems. BGP uses the network reachability information to construct a graph of AS connectivity, which enables BGP to remove routing loops and enforce policy decisions at the AS level. BGP allows for policy-based routing. You can use routing policies to choose among multiple paths to a destination and to control the redistribution of routing information.

The Junos OS routing protocol software on the Juniper MX router supports BGP version 4. This version of BGP adds support for Classless Interdomain Routing (CIDR), which eliminates the concept of network classes. Instead of assuming which bits of an address represent the network by looking at the first octet, CIDR allows you to explicitly specify the number of bits in the network address, thus providing a means to decrease the size of the routing tables. BGP version 4 also supports aggregation of routes, including the aggregation of AS paths.

This test auto-discovers the BGP peers connected to the target Juniper MX router and for each BGP peer, reports the current status and the count of messages transmitted and received through each BGP peer. This way, administrators may identify the BGP peer that is active/idle/connected and also find out the peer that transmits more number of messages to the target router.

Target of the test : A Juniper MX router

Agent deploying the test : An external agent

Outputs of the test : One set of results for each hardware component of the Juniper MX router that is to be monitored.

Configurable parameters for the test
Parameters Description

Test period

How often should the test be executed

Host

The IP address of the Juniper MX Router.

SNMPPort

The port at which the monitored target exposes its SNMP MIB; the default is 161.

SNMPversion

By default, the eG agent supports SNMP version 1. Accordingly, the default selection in the SNMPversion list is v1. However, if a different SNMP framework is in use in your environment, say SNMP v2 or v3, then select the corresponding option from this list.

SNMPCommunity

The SNMP community name that the test uses to communicate with the firewall. This parameter is specific to SNMP v1 and v2 only. Therefore, if the snmpversion chosen is v3, then this parameter will not appear.

Username

This parameter appears only when v3 is selected as the SNMPversion. SNMP version 3 (SNMPv3) is an extensible SNMP Framework which supplements the SNMPv2 Framework, by additionally supporting message security, access control, and remote SNMP configuration capabilities. To extract performance statistics from the MIB using the highly secure SNMP v3 protocol, the eG agent has to be configured with the required access privileges – in other words, the eG agent should connect to the MIB using the credentials of a user with access permissions to be MIB. Therefore, specify the name of such a user against this parameter. 

Context

This parameter appears only when v3 is selected as the SNMPVERSION. An SNMP context is a collection of management information accessible by an SNMP entity. An item of management information may exist in more than one context and an SNMP entity potentially has access to many contexts. A context is identified by the SNMPEngineID value of the entity hosting the management information (also called a contextEngineID) and a context name that identifies the specific context (also called a contextName). If the Username provided is associated with a context name, then the eG agent will be able to poll the MIB and collect metrics only if it is configured with the context name as well. In such cases therefore, specify the context name of the Username in the Context text box.  By default, this parameter is set to none.

Authpass

Specify the password that corresponds to the above-mentioned Username. This parameter once again appears only if the SNMPversion selected is v3.

Confirm password

Confirm the Authpass by retyping it here.

Authtype

This parameter too appears only if v3 is selected as the SNMPversion. From the AuthType list box, choose the authentication algorithm using which SNMP v3 converts the specified username and password into a 32-bit format to ensure security of SNMP transactions. You can choose between the following options:

  • MD5 - Message Digest Algorithm
  • SHA - Secure Hash Algorithm
  • SHA224 - Secure Hash Algorithm 224 bit
  • SHA256 - Secure Hash Algorithm 256 bit
  • SHA384 - Secure Hash Algorithm 384 bit
  • SHA512 - Secure Hash Algorithm 512 bit

Encryptflag

This flag appears only when v3 is selected as the SNMPversion. By default, the eG agent does not encrypt SNMP requests. Accordingly, the this flag is set to No by default. To ensure that SNMP requests sent by the eG agent are encrypted, select the Yes option. 

Encrypttype

If the EncryptFlag is set to Yes, then you will have to mention the encryption type by selecting an option from the EncryptType list. SNMP v3 supports the following encryption types:

  • DES - Data Encryption Standard
  • 3DES - Triple Data Encryption Standard
  • AES - Advanced Encryption Standard
  • AES128 - Advanced Encryption Standard 128 bit
  • AES192 - Advanced Encryption Standard 192 bit
  • AES256 - Advanced Encryption Standard 256 bit

Encryptpassword

Specify the encryption password here.

Confirm Password

Confirm the encryption password by retyping it here.

Timeout

Specify the duration (in seconds) within which the SNMP query executed by this test should time out in this text box. The default is 10 seconds.

Data Over TCP

By default, in an IT environment, all data transmission occurs over UDP. Some environments however, may be specifically configured to offload a fraction of the data traffic – for instance, certain types of data traffic or traffic pertaining to specific components – to other protocols like TCP, so as to prevent UDP overloads. In such environments, you can instruct the eG agent to conduct the SNMP data traffic related to the monitored target over TCP (and not UDP). For this, set this flag to Yes. By default, this flag is set to No.

Engine ID

This parameter appears only when v3 is selected as the SNMPVersion. Sometimes, the test may not report metrics when AES192 or AES256 is chosen as the Encryption type. To ensure that the test report metrics consistently, administrators need to set this flag to Yes. By default, this parameter is set to No.

Measurements made by the test
Measurement Description Measurement Unit Interpretation

State

Indicates the current status of this BGP peer.

 

BGP forms a TCP session with neighbor routers called peers. BGP uses the Finite State Machine (FSM) to maintain a table of all BGP peers and their operational status.

The values reported by this measure and its numeric equivalents are mentioned in the table below:

Measure value Numeric Value
Idle 1
Connect 2
Active 3
Open present 4
Open confirm 5
Established 6

Note:

By default, this measure reports the Measure Values listed in the table above to indicate the current status of each BGP peer. The graph of this measure however, is represented using the numeric equivalents only.

Received message

Indicates the number of messages received by this BGP peer.

Number

Comparing the values of these measures across the BGP peers will help you identify the BGP peer that is busy processing messages.

Transmitted message

Indicates the number of messages transmitted through this BGP neighbor.

Number