Protocol overhead versus router processing and memory tradeoffs in evaluating BGP inbound soft reset mechanisms for tactical IP networks

Abstract

Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is the inter-domain routing protocol of choice across the Global Information Grid (GIG) as in the commercial Internet. There is a future need and motivation to extend BGP to connect the large-scale future military networks of the Army, Navy and Air Force to the GIG as independent Autonomous Systems (ASes) using satellite and wide area networking (WAN) technologies. These networks are expected to be highly mobile and multi-homed to the GIG. Higher BGP protocol activity and policy use, both in the inter-and intra-domain, is anticipated for such mobile ASes compared to the largely static commercial counterparts. Wireless bandwidth being a scarcer and more volatile network resource, emphasizes the need to manage protocol overheads among routers in dynamic mobile network environments. This is in contrast to the primary concern of optimizing router packet processing and memory utilization in significantly higher speed provider networks of the Internet. In consideration of the different dynamics expected, we analyze BGP “soft resets” as one small but high-impact operational property of BGP for the tactical Internet, specifically the “inbound soft resets” and the different methods for implementing them. We support our comparative analysis with empirical results, 1 also evaluating impacts on BGP Route Reflectors with multiple peers.