A hierarchical model for BGP routing policies
Laurent Vanbever, Bruno Quoitin, Olivier Bonaventure · 2009
BGP routing policies are mainly used by network operators to enforce business relationships between Autonomous Systems (AS), and to prefer some routes over others. In this paper, we propose a hierarchical policy model to express each policy at the most appropriate level of abstraction. The model is structured around chains of filters that apply at a specific level of abstraction. To validate our approach, we implemented the model in a Java prototype and used it to reproduce several network-wide routing policies. In all studied networks, the model produced a high-level view of routing policies while preserving their semantics. Our model offers numerous advantages to network operators including, but not limited to, a better network documentation, an improved understanding of routing policies, redundancy suppression, and an easier way of managing their network.