BGP Challenge

[whitaker]

ok, so I'm trying to implement some BGP routing for the first time.  I've read through the advanced IP network design, Internet Routing Architectures, the RFCs, and a couple other books on BGP.  But as we all know, none of this compares to good experience.  So, before I attempt to implement BGP in mission critical datacenter, I thought I'd run it by the experts (that's you!) to make sure I'm understanding this right.    I have two 6509s, each connecting through hssi interface to seperate SONET rings to separate providers.  We basically run like an ASP, and have several networks we're advertising.  One of our provider's OC-12 ring is not currently implented yet, but this shouldn't make any difference in the configuration.    So, here's my sample BGP config:   ! 6509A router bgp <My AS number> no synchronization   ! list networks to advertise network <network1> mask 255.255.255.0 network <network2> mask 255.255.255.240 ! define provider1 and second 6509 as neighbors neighbor <Genuity ip address> remote-as 1 neighbor <ip address of 6509B> remote-as <My AS number>   ! Add filter list to only advertise internal routes so that we don't become transitive neighbor <Genuity ip address> filter-list 10 out ip as-path access-list 10 permit ^$   ! prepend my AS number to network that is on 6509B.  This should help to 'load-balance' some. access-list 1 permit <network3> 255.255.255.0 access-list 1 permit <network4> 255.255.255.0 neighbor <genuity ip address> route-map add_as out route-map add_as permit 10 match ip address 1 set as-path prepend <My AS> <My AS>   ------------------------------------------------------- ! 6509B router bgp <My AS number> ! list networks to advertise network <network3> mask 255.255.255.0 network <network4> mask 255.255.255.0   ! define provider2 and first 6509 as neighbors neighbor <Sprint ip address> remote-as <sprint AS number> neighbor <ip address of 6509A> remote-as <my AS number>   ! Add filter list to only advertise internal routes so that we don't become transitive neighbor <Sprint ip address> filter-list 10 out ip as-path access-list 10 permit ^$ ! prepend my AS number to networks that are on 6509A. This should help to 'load-balance' some. access-list 1 permit <network1> mask 255.255.255.0 access-list 1 permit <network2> mask 255.255.255.240 neighbor <sprint ip address> route-map add_as out route-map add_as permit 10 match ip address 1 set as-path prepend <My AS> <My AS>   Here's my questions: * Networks are going to be added once a week, not all at once.  To add a network, it is my understanding that I type 'clear ip bgp * soft-reconfiguration outbound' to reset the bgp connection.  Is this correct? * Does this configuration effectively make my network non-transitive? * I've read about peer groups - would this be an effective way of maintaining the configuration between the two 6509s?  Or would it just be adding an additional level of complexity?   * Will this configuration help to balance out the traffic some across the two 6509s?