Rating: 
Summary: A great advanced BGP book!
Review: This book provides an excellent BGP resource! I have been working with BGP since 1999 and I haven't seen a book that gives you real world scenarios and examples like this one. This book is definitely a higher level text that will help tie all the components of BGP together. The case studies are great examples of how to migrate from different architectures and designs. Not many books have that included. Also the book has good coverage of mBGP, MPLS VPNs, IPv6 and Interdomain multicast. This book picks up where Internet Routing Architectures leaves off. In my opinion the IRA book should be considered a perquisite to this book, it isn't for the faint of heart. In my experience as a consultant, many network guys are afraid or don't really understand how to properly setup and maintain BGP. Now, the answers can be found in this book. In chapter 1 the book starts off with an introduction to advanced BGP. Chapter 2 gives you the information to size your Internet routers by breaking down the memory utilization of BGP and router functions as well as estimation formulas for determining memory needs. Chapter 3 on performance tuning is very useful if you already have a solid infrastructure and looking to tweak the environment for faster convergence and easy of support. One of the most important details, if not the most important detail, is the routing policy you apply to BGP updates both inbound and outbound. Chapter 4 covers BGP policies in detail including how to filter based on AS path, filtering on routing blocks, and community lists. The chapter also covers aggregation, QoS policy propagation, and filter order of operation, which is very critical when building a policy especially when multiple techniques such as filter lists and route-maps are used. The explanation of regular expressions is easy to understand even if you haven't dealt with them in UNIX or other operating systems. Chapters 5 and 6 discuss enterprise BGP core and Internet connectivity design. Chapters 7 and 8 have a lot of good meat in them on how to scale BGP for large and small environments. The chapters discuss how to effectively use route reflectors, Inter-AS scenarios, and confederations as well as filtering and path selection techniques of each. Chapter 9 discusses how to build a service provider core and customer BGP connectivity. This section is excellent on Service Provider networks, which is something most engineers don't get to see or have hands on experience. The last few chapters dive into very new and advanced BGP topics in an easy and simple manner, which will prepare you for the future. These final sections that discuss mBGP, MPLS VPNs, Interdomain Multicast and IPv6, which includes a lot of the newer technology service providers and large enterprises will be deploying in the near future. The sections focus on the BGP side of things, as it should, not the other technologies. If you haven't had real world BGP experience this book will help get you ready for a lot of routing and filtering issues. If you are experienced with BGP this book is a great refresher and teaches you how to scale and stabilize your routing tables.
Rating:
Summary: A great advanced BGP book!
Review: This book provides an excellent BGP resource! I have been working with BGP since 1999 and I haven't seen a book that gives you real world scenarios and examples like this one. This book is definitely a higher level text that will help tie all the components of BGP together. The case studies are great examples of how to migrate from different architectures and designs. Not many books have that included. Also the book has good coverage of mBGP, MPLS VPNs, IPv6 and Interdomain multicast. This book picks up where Internet Routing Architectures leaves off. In my opinion the IRA book should be considered a perquisite to this book, it isn't for the faint of heart. In my experience as a consultant, many network guys are afraid or don't really understand how to properly setup and maintain BGP. Now, the answers can be found in this book. In chapter 1 the book starts off with an introduction to advanced BGP. Chapter 2 gives you the information to size your Internet routers by breaking down the memory utilization of BGP and router functions as well as estimation formulas for determining memory needs. Chapter 3 on performance tuning is very useful if you already have a solid infrastructure and looking to tweak the environment for faster convergence and easy of support. One of the most important details, if not the most important detail, is the routing policy you apply to BGP updates both inbound and outbound. Chapter 4 covers BGP policies in detail including how to filter based on AS path, filtering on routing blocks, and community lists. The chapter also covers aggregation, QoS policy propagation, and filter order of operation, which is very critical when building a policy especially when multiple techniques such as filter lists and route-maps are used. The explanation of regular expressions is easy to understand even if you haven't dealt with them in UNIX or other operating systems. Chapters 5 and 6 discuss enterprise BGP core and Internet connectivity design. Chapters 7 and 8 have a lot of good meat in them on how to scale BGP for large and small environments. The chapters discuss how to effectively use route reflectors, Inter-AS scenarios, and confederations as well as filtering and path selection techniques of each. Chapter 9 discusses how to build a service provider core and customer BGP connectivity. This section is excellent on Service Provider networks, which is something most engineers don't get to see or have hands on experience. The last few chapters dive into very new and advanced BGP topics in an easy and simple manner, which will prepare you for the future. These final sections that discuss mBGP, MPLS VPNs, Interdomain Multicast and IPv6, which includes a lot of the newer technology service providers and large enterprises will be deploying in the near future. The sections focus on the BGP side of things, as it should, not the other technologies. If you haven't had real world BGP experience this book will help get you ready for a lot of routing and filtering issues. If you are experienced with BGP this book is a great refresher and teaches you how to scale and stabilize your routing tables.
Rating:
Summary: Real world BGP - advanced solutions
Review: This book provides an excellent reference for understanding advanced BGP designs and implementations. It expands on the general BGP functionality and configuration covered in other BGP books like Internet Routing Architectures (ISBN: 157870233X). If you need a general BGP book or are just starting to learn BGP, start with Internet Routing Architectures to learn about BGP then use this book to understand how to use BGP.Advanced BGP design concepts are presented in a logical flow and practical design scenarios are included to help you understand how and why the concept is deployed. In addition to advanced BGP designs, topics covered are performance tuning, policy control, Enterprise and Service Provider design guidelines, MPLS VPN, Multicast and IPv6. These are topics not clearly discussed in Cisco documentation with this same emphasis on learning advanced BGP concepts. My only wish (not a complaint in any way) is that a chapter or appendix was included as a general BGP review for reference. Maybe in the 2nd edition as the book is updated? Kudos to the authors and Cisco Press for compiling this information in such a useful and readable book! Highly recommend!!
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