to expand a bit .. i created an acl to match all prefixes longer than a /19:

access-list 101 permit ip any 255.255.240.0 0.0.15.255

and an acl to match everything else:

access-list 102 permit ip any any

i created route-map "damp":

route-map damp permit 10 match ip address 101 set dampening 30 750 2000 90 ! route-map damp permit 20 match ip address 102 set dampening 15 750 2000 60

in the first sequence (10) of the route-map, i match all prefixes longer than a /19 (via acl 101) and apply the following dampening thresholds: half-life= 30 minutes reuse-value= 750 suppress-value= 2000 max-supress= 90 minutes in the second sequence i match everything else (via acl 102) and applied cisco's default values: halflife= 15 minutes reuse-value= 750 suppress-value= 2000 max-suppress= 60 minutes i then applied the route-map to bgp dampening:

router bgp 65534 bgp dampening route-map damp

each time a route flaps it gets a penalty - 1000. if the cumulative penalty is greater than the suppress-value (2000 here, so 3 flaps), the advertisement of the route will be suppressed. the penalty will be exponentially decayed based on the half-life. once the penalty decreases below the reuse-value (750 here), the advertisement will be unsuppressed. using cisco's defaults (the second sequence), if a route flaps a lot in a very short period then becomes stable, it will only be suppressed for a maximum of 1 hour. with the first sequence, the half-life is doubled and the maximum amount of time a route that has become stable will be suppressed is 90 minutes .. basically. back to the floods... -danny