3. Design Criteria

Route reflection was designed to satisfy the following criteria.

• Simplicity

  Any alternative must be simple to configure and easy to understand.

• Easy Transition

  It must be possible to transition from a full-mesh configuration without the need to change either topology or AS. This is an unfortunate management overhead of the technique proposed in [3].

• Compatibility

  It must be possible for noncompliant IBGP peers to continue to be part of the original AS or domain without any loss of BGP routing information.

These criteria were motivated by operational experiences of a very large and topology-rich network with many external connections.