On the Power-Law of the Internet and the Prediction of BGP Convergence

Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is the de facto inter-domain routing protocol. With the rapid development of Internet, the convergence problem of BGP attracts more attention, which is an inborn limitation for path vector routing protocol. But previous work can’t give a definite and comprehensive answer to it. This paper presents a new BGP convergence model and analyzes the convergence delay bounds of BGP. The development trends of all factors influencing the convergence time are forecasted based on the power law of AS-level internet topology and the BGP protocol standards. Furthermore, we predict what the BGP convergence delay will be. The result shows that BGP convergence time will be influenced by processing efficiency of CPU, degree of ASs and value of MRAI greatly, but the influence of path length and link delay will be reduced.