Ref: Your note of Fri, 1 May 92 7:12:54 CDT BGPv2 spec has the following text on the NEXT_HOP subject: "The NEXT_HOP path attribute defines the IP address of the border router that should be used as the next hop to the networks listed in the UPDATE message. This border router must belong to the same AS as the BGP peer that advertises it." BGPv2 spec requires checking NEXT_HOP ONLY for correct syntax (i.e., NEXT_HOP should carry a syntactically valid IP address). There is no specified timeout between consecutive BGP close and open. Yakov.