Network Working Group                                          P. Traina
Request for Comments: 5065                            Blissfully Retired
Obsoletes: 3065                                             D. McPherson
Category: Standards Track                                 Arbor Networks
                                                              J. Scudder
                                                        Juniper Networks
                                                             August 2007


                Autonomous System Confederations for BGP

Status of This Memo

   This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the
   Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for
   improvements.  Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet
   Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state
   and status of this protocol.  Distribution of this memo is unlimited.

Copyright Notice

   Copyright (C) The IETF Trust (2007).

Abstract

   The Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is an inter-autonomous system
   routing protocol designed for Transmission Control Protocol/Internet
   Protocol (TCP/IP) networks.  BGP requires that all BGP speakers
   within a single autonomous system (AS) must be fully meshed.  This
   represents a serious scaling problem that has been well documented in
   a number of proposals.

   This document describes an extension to BGP that may be used to
   create a confederation of autonomous systems that is represented as a
   single autonomous system to BGP peers external to the confederation,
   thereby removing the "full mesh" requirement.  The intention of this
   extension is to aid in policy administration and reduce the
   management complexity of maintaining a large autonomous system.

   This document obsoletes RFC 3065.











Traina, et al.              Standards Track                     [Page 1]

RFC 5065                                                     August 2007


Table of Contents

   1. Introduction ....................................................3
      1.1. Specification of Requirements ..............................3
      1.2. Terminology ................................................3