Cisco IOS: BGP default route with low on RAM

BGP default route

.. he has two upstream links and runs BGP on both. Since his router is low on RAM, he cannot accept full routing, so he's just announcing his IP prefix and using static default routing toward upstream ISPs.

The relevant configuration on the GW router is somewhat similar to the configuration I've used as a staring point in my lab:

interface Serial1/0
 ip address 10.0.1.1 255.255.255.252
!
interface Serial1/1
 ip address 10.0.1.5 255.255.255.252
!
router bgp 65100
 neighbor 10.0.1.2 remote-as 65001
 neighbor 10.0.1.6 remote-as 65002
!
ip route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 10.0.1.2
ip route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 10.0.1.6 250

I'm sure the long-time readers of my blog immediately figured out where the catch is: if the upstream router dies, but the interface stays up, the outbound traffic is blackholed. Reliable static routing might be a solution, but his router is running an old IOS version. Obviously it's time for yet another rarely known BGP feature: the BGP default route.

If you've mastered default routes in other routing protocols, forget about what you know … BGP is different:

• The default route is not announced to BGP neighbors, even if it's in the IP routing table and BGP table.
  
• To announce a default route to a BGP neighbor, you have to configure neighbor default-originate.
  
• Once you've configured default route advertising, it's announced to the neighbor even if the router doesn't have the default route itself.
  
• The default route advertised to a BGP neighbor does not pass through BGP output filters, so you cannot filter it.

To solve Martin's problem, you'd have to reconfigure BGP on E1 and E2 as follows (the ip as-path access list just ensures nothing else is sent to the customer router; obviously you could use a route-map instead):

router bgp 65002
 neighbor 10.0.1.5 remote-as 65100
 neighbor 10.0.1.5 default-originate
 neighbor 10.0.1.5 filter-list 1 out
!
ip as-path access-list 1 deny .*

Now that the default route is advertised via BGP, there is no need for a static default, and the default route will be removed (and replaced with the backup one) if the BGP neighbor disappears.