Network Working Group D. Haskin
Request for Comments: 1397 Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc.
January 1993
Default Route Advertisement In BGP2 And BGP3 Versions Of The Border Gateway Protocol
1. Overview
The purpose of the default route advertisement capability is to advertise the IP address of a border gateway which can be used as the default next hop to destinations that are not listed explicitly in the BGP peer's routing table.
2. Default Route Advertisement
A default route is advertised in an UPDATE message that carries reachability information for network 0.0.0.0. A Network field of such an UPDATE message must contain the IP address 0.0.0.0 as the indication that it carries a default route. The NEXT_HOP path attribute of such a message provides the IP address of a border gateway that can be used as a default next hop to destinations that are not listed in the BGP peer's routing table. The value of the ORIGIN attribute should be 2 (INCOMPLETE). The AS_PATH attribute should be constructed according to the same rules that apply to a conventional network advertisement.
Haskin [Page 1]
RFC 1397 Default Routes in Old BGPs January 1993
If multiple default routes are advertised by a BGP speaker, the INTER-AS-METRIC path attribute can be included in the corresponding UPDATE messages to express preference levels for entry points to the same AS.