I have a problem I cannot solve. If anyone is running confederations like mine, I would appreciate some help :-) We have a 4-memberAS confederation, each with two IBGP peers. The arrangement looks sort of like an octagon. the "r" is AS3 is an internal hop, not a BGP peer. _______ ______ | R-----R---r | | / | | | | |AS2 R | |AS3 R | ----|-- ----|- | | ____|__ ____|_ |AS4 R | |AS1 R | | \ | | / | | R-------R | ------- ------ The problem is this: How do you get BGP to choose the shortest "AS PATH", since internal AS paths are ignored in selecting BGP routes? Right now, to top router in AS4 will always choose a route through (2 3 1) instead of (1), because it prefers "external" routes (even external confederation routes) over internal routes. So, when given a choice, the router on the distant side of the AS will ALWAYS prefer the three-AS-hop path, because it is external. Is there a way around this?!? Avi Freedman suggested using a +1 metric when leaving each member-AS. (Thanks Avi!) But it doesn't seem to help - perhaps I didn't do it right. In fact, it doesn't look like the metrics are adjusted more than 1. for example, from AS2, the lower router sees every route outside of AS2 as having only metric 1! The top router in AS3 does not add 1 to the metrics it readvertises to AS2. I've been stewing over this problem for some time... I believe there is some clue that I've missed. Any help would be greatly appreciated! -Andy -- Andy McConnell アンディ マッコネル Network Architect, NTT Multimedia Communications Laboratories Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.