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BGP Troubleshooting Playbook

A diagnostic sequence that avoids random troubleshooting.

When BGP does not behave as expected, separate transport, session, reception, selection and advertisement. This sequence helps isolate the failing layer quickly.

  1. 01
    IP transport: reachability, source, TTL, ACL and return path
  2. 02
    Session: neighbor state, ASN, timers, authentication and capabilities
  3. 03
    Reception: prefix received or filtered before the RIB?
  4. 04
    Validation: resolvable next hop and admissible route?
  5. 05
    Selection: BGP attributes and competition with other paths
  6. 06
    Installation: route present in RIB/FIB?
  7. 07
    Advertisement: export policy, communities and redistribution conditions
  8. 08
    Dataplane: actual forwarding, ECMP, asymmetry and MTU
  9. 09
    Change control: compare with pre-incident baseline
  10. 10
    Evidence: capture commands and timestamps before modifying state

Complex BGP incident or sensitive change? I can help structure the diagnosis.

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