Question 38 - JN0-480 discussion

To implement ECMP in IP fabric using EBGP, you need to enable BGP to install multiple equal-cost paths in the routing table and to advertise them to the peers. The following actions are required to achieve this:

B) Use a load balancing policy applied to BGP as an export policy. This is true because you need to apply a load balancing policy to BGP as an export policy to allow BGP to advertise multiple paths to the same destination to the peers. By default, BGP only advertises the best path to the peers, which prevents ECMP. A load balancing policy can be configured to match the desired routes and set the multipath attribute to true. This will enable BGP to advertise up to the maximum number of paths configured by the maximum-paths command. For example, the following configuration applies a load balancing policy to BGP as an export policy for the neighbor 10.10.10.1:

policy-statement load-balance { term 1 { from { route-filter 192.168.0.0/16 exact; } then { multipath; accept; } } } protocols { bgp { group ebgp { type external; neighbor 10.10.10.1 { export load-balance; } } } }

C) Use the multipath multiple-as BGP parameter. This is true because you need to enable the multipath multiple-as BGP parameter to allow BGP to install multiple paths from different autonomous systems in the routing table. By default, BGP only installs multiple paths from the same autonomous system, which limits ECMP. The multipath multiple-as parameter can be configured under the BGP group or neighbor level. This will enable BGP to install up to the maximum number of paths configured by the maximum-paths command. For example, the following configuration enables the multipath multiple-as parameter for the BGP group ebgp:

protocols { bgp { group ebgp { type external; multipath multiple-as; } } }

The following options are incorrect because:

A) Use a load balancing policy applied to the forwarding table as an export policy is wrong because applying a load balancing policy to the forwarding table does not affect the BGP advertisement or installation of multiple paths. A load balancing policy applied to the forwarding table only affects how the traffic is distributed among the multiple paths in the forwarding table. It does not enable ECMP in BGP.

D) Use a load balancing policy applied to BGP as an import policy is wrong because applying a load balancing policy to BGP as an import policy does not affect the BGP advertisement of multiple paths. A load balancing policy applied to BGP as an import policy only affects how the BGP routes are accepted or rejected from the peers. It does not enable ECMP in BGP.Reference:

IP Fabric Underlay Network Design and Implementation

Use ECMP to distribute traffic between two paths, one learned by eBGP and one learned by iBGP on a Cisco NX-OS switch

Example: Configure an EVPN-VXLAN Centrally-Routed Bridging Fabric Using EBGP