[Xorp-hackers] BGP peers output

Mike Horn mhorn@vyatta.com
Wed, 5 Apr 2006 08:50:09 -0700 (PDT)


Hi Kristian,

I agree that the "show bgp peers" command could use a few improvements.  I like what you have done, I also think that the Juniper "show bgp summary" command also provides some useful combined BGP path information.  Below are a few suggestions on the proposed formatting.

me@mybox> show bgp peers

Total Paths   Active Paths   Damped Paths   Paths with Penalties
220568        183521         12             4

F:Flaps   PA:Accepted prefixes   PF: Filtered prefixes   PS:Sent prefixes
TS:Prefixes to send

Peer             ASN    F        Time           PA       PF      PS      TS
53.123.53.25     34853  0     0w,1d,03:45:23    Active (retry in 67s)
87.13.214.1      4834   0     0w,4d,06:23:57    Admin Down
123.123.123.123  12345  1028  100w,5d,12:23:54  183521   126051  183521  15
217.10.127.17    39525  0     00:12:43          182145   0       23      0


I know real estate is tight, but a few of the columns might be too narrow.  For instance the Flaps column is max 3 char if you want to have a space before Time which may not be enough (long lived sessions, flapping link, etc).

Also, the PF and PS columns are limited to 5 char if you want spacing between them, this is probably typically enough, but if for instance your upstream sends you the full route table and you are filtering for a limited number of prefixes you could you a six char set of PF or if you are sending full table you will need 6 char.

I updated the spacing and put some larger values in to demonstrate some suggested spacing updates.

I prefer sorting by ASN, but I'm sure opinions on this will vary.  I think the description field should be in the 'detail' output but not in the 'summary'.

Finally, I think we should have an option to specify the peer IP or ASN and get a subset of peers in the 'summary' format.

Thanks for working on this!

-mike

----- Original Message -----
From: Kristian Larsson <kristian@juniks.net>
To: xorp-hackers@xorp.org
Sent: Wednesday, April 5, 2006 6:26:35 AM GMT-0700
Subject: [Xorp-hackers] BGP peers output

Long time ago I submitted a patch for a nicer
output of the show bgp peers commands.
Atanu had thoughts about recoding the bgp show
tool so the patches were never commited. Now I
looked them over and thought that the output could
be improved further... 

Cisco output:
Neighbor        V    AS MsgRcvd MsgSent   TblVer  InQ OutQ Up/Down  State/PfxRcd
85.195.4.148    4 39525    2096   86561  1027248    0    0 14:07:57        0
217.10.127.18   4 35706  100426    1423  1027248    0    0 22:18:57   182206

Cisco has MsgRcvd and MsgSent, which I've really doesn't understand the purpose 
of. Foundrys approach is much better with receied/filtered/sent/tosend prefixes.
I think version can be ommited today, anyone using anything else than v4?

Foundry output:
  Neighbor Address  AS#   State   Time     Rt:Accepted Filtered Sent   ToSend
  1.3.3.7           3246  CONN   23h15m50s    0        0        0      30
  85.195.63.7       35706 ESTAB   2d11h44m    182145   0        181463 0
  85.195.63.14      35706 ESTAB  19d 3h18m    640      0        181463 0
  213.50.153.237    3246  ESTAB  22d 8h20m    182115   0        30     0
  217.10.127.2      31642 ESTAB  22d 8h20m    2        0        4      0
  217.10.127.10     39525 ESTAB  19d16h47m    1        0        1      0
  217.10.127.14     39525 CONN    6d16h 6m    0        0        0      182208
  217.10.127.17     39525 ESTAB  22h19m43s    2        0        182208 0


I would like to combine the best of this.
What do we need to see?

Peer IP address
Peer remote AS
State of the session
How long it has been in this state
Number of flaps is nice
Number of received prefixes
number of filtered prefixes
number of sent prefixes
number of prefixes to send (really great when writing route-maps)

I had something like this in mind..
XORP output - Next Generation:
me@mybox> show bgp peers
F:Flaps   PA:Accepted prefixes   PF: Filtered prefixes   PS:Sent prefixes
TS:Prefixes to send

Peer             ASN    F      Time            PA        PF    PS    TS
53.123.53.25     34853  0   0w,1d,03:45:23     Active, attempt in 67 secs.
87.13.214.1      4834   0   0w,4d,06:23:57     Administratively down
123.123.123.123  12345  0   1w,5d,12:23:54     183521    0     0     0
217.10.127.17    39525  0   00:12:43           182145    0     23    0

We never explicitly tell the user that a session is established, but if you
have received prefixes from a neighbor I think you can safely presume it is
in a established state. What do you think of this output?
Should we sort by IP address or AS number? Perhaps descriptions for BGP 
neighbors should be included?

Now I'm just talking about the short output. The detailed output should 
ofcourse contain just about every information we have about the session.
I will try and propose something for detailed output as well.

What do you all think?

Regards,
Kristian

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