BGP Large Communities solve a big issue for network operators world-wide. The final milestone in Large BGP Communities’ progression from an idea, to an Internet-Draft, and finally to publication as an RFC has been reached! Large BGP Communities Internet-Draft revision -12 was published as RFC 8092 BGP Large Communities Attribute today.

Publication as an RFC was accomplished in a remarkably short time, due to the close cooperation and strong consensus between the IETF IDR Working Group and network operators. The idea progressed rapidly from its inception in March 2016, to the first Internet-Draft in September 2016, to its final IESG approval stages in January 2017, and finally to publication as an RFC in barely seven months. In addition to the final standard, a number of implementations and tools were developed along the way, so that network operators can test and deploy the new technology now.

While the final milestone to RFC publication has been reached, this is by no means the end of the story! Evangelism and education on the use of Large BGP Communities continues at network operator conferences around the world. Work also continues on the Usage of Large BGP Communities Internet-Draft, to provide examples and inspiration for network operators on how to use Large BGP Communities.

Stay tuned for Large BGP Communities implementation development and deployment news. The document’s history can be viewed here.

It’s time to celebrate: 32-bit ASNs are first class citizens now too!