ewcomers is the many attributes that can be configured. A variety of weights can be attributed to paths, with names like local preference, weight, communities, and multiexit discriminator. To make matters worse, many of these attributes are very similar in function. The protocol also functions differently from other protocols. For example, the network statement, which is used to enable interfaces in other protocols, is used to list the specific networks that can be advertised in BGP. BGP does not discover neighbors; they must be configured manually. There can only be one autonomous system on any given router, though it may communicate with neighbors in other autonomous systems. BGP is the routing protocol of the Internet. Many of the major service providers allow anonymous telnet into route servers that act just like Cisco routers. Do an Internet search for the term "looking-glass routers," and you should find plenty links. These route servers are an excellent way to learn more about BGP, as they are a part of the largest network in the world, and have active routes to just about every public network on Earth. Unless you're working at a tier-1 service provider, where else could you get to poke around with a BGP router that has 20 neighbors, 191,898 prefixes, and 3,666,117 paths? I have a pretty cool lab, but I can't compare with that! Here is the output from an actual route server: route-server> sho ip bgp summary BGP router identifier 10.1.2.5, local AS number 65000 BGP table version is 208750, main routing table version 208750 191680 network entries using 19359680 bytes of memory 3641563 path entries using 174795024 bytes of memory 46514 BGP path attribute entries using 2605064 bytes of memory 42009 BGP AS-PATH entries using 1095100 bytes of memory 4 BGP community entries using 96 bytes of memory 0 BGP route-map cache entries using 0 bytes of memory 0 BGP filter-list cache entries using 0 bytes of memory BGP using 197854964 total bytes of memory Dampening enabled. 2687 history paths, 420 dampened paths 191529 r