The Impatient BGP Administrator

THE BIGGEST AND MOST COMMON REASON FOR PROBLEMS WHEN TROUBLESHOOTING OR CONFIGURING BGP? IMPATIENCE!

Due to his impatience the local administrator begins changing his BGP configuration as fast as he can type which is about every thirty seconds. The changes to the BGP session cause it to repeatedly reset, making the BGP entries in the routing tables across the Internet flap (but not if the ISP has properly tuned their own BGP). These route flaps trigger the hold down timer, cause route dampening and ultimately cause his traffic to drop off to ZERO even though the local BGP session is up and exchanging routes.

Don't fiddle around with the BGP session unless you have no other choice.
Figure out why it broke before meddling with things you don't understand.
Get second or third level support personnel at your ISP on the horn before doing any serious BGP configuration.
--InetD

By default, BGP sends messages NOT FASTER than 90 seconds apart to prevent the network from being flooded with updates. It takes AT LEAST TWO UPDATES or THREE MINUTES to get the BGP state to stabilize. The changes need to propagate through the Internet and it takes three minutes or longer per router to clear the routing issues. Every time your route flaps, the hold down timer DOUBLES. If your routes are dampened, your BGP session could theoretically be down for DAYS depending upon how your ISP configured their timer settings!