as-out metrics

  > Laurent Joncheray <lpj at merit.edu> writes:
  > 	Ok, i try to explain...
  > 
  > When you have a router and you export a route to someone else (for
  > instance an RS6000 :-) running gated), you have to configure the
  > metric BGP is going to put in its outgoing packets. With gated it will
  > be something like:
  > 
  > bgp yes {
  > 	[...]
  > 	group type external peeras 690
  > 		metricout 5
  > 		version 4
  >                 lcladdr 35.42.1.56
  >                 {
  >                         peer 140.222.51.62
  >                         gateway 35.42.1.56;
  >                 };
  > };
  > 
  > The metric in as-out is *what you configure in your router* (here it is 5)
  > So:
  > - You have TOTAL control of it.
  > - It is optional, so if you don't care (if you use the router's default val
  > ue)
  > then DON'T USE IT.
  > - Some philosophers will talk about this metric as a preference or an advis
  > e
  > for the neighbourg ASes. I don't care. My job is to generate config files
  > for routers (included gated) so if people want to have 'metricout 31416' in
  > their dam config file they need to specify it somewhere. And somewhere is
  > in as-out.

Explanation understood.

What does the peer do with this number?
Is its use defined by the protocol?

My first impulse is to register this as
bgp-metric: <metric> <as> ...
since it is protocol specific and needs a specific value configured
rhather than a relative cost.

Is this acceptable?


Daniel



-------- Logged at  Thu Apr 28 22:46:16 MET DST 1994  ---------