The benefits of monitoring routing protocols in live networks

This paper examines the benefits of deploying protocol centric network monitoring tools in IP and BGP/MPLS VPN networks. For the past three years, we have analysed the routing traffic from the following protocols: IS-IS, BGP and MP-BGP in three different autonomous systems. We explain how one can transform routing protocol packets into valid network management information. We demonstrate that protocol-centric monitoring tools allow unprecedented troubleshooting of routing issues, particularly in the case of BGP/MPLS VPN networks. We also outline that in the BGP/MPLS VPN AS, control plane traffic characteristics are very different from the internet control plane traffic. As such handling BGP/MPLS VPN control plane is a challenge for large service providers from the testing, monitoring and deployment point of views.