Technical Note: BGP four-byte AS Path (RFC 4893) support in FortiOS

[adebeer_FTNT]

Description

BGP four-byte AS Path (RFC 4893) has been supported since FortiOS 4.0MR2.

Solution

For more information about BGP 4-byte AS Path Support please refer to the Fortinet Technical Guides available in the Fortinet Document Library:

• What's new in FortiOS 4.0MR2
• Dynamic Routing (FortiOS 5.2)

A BGP router defined with a local 4-octect ASN and peering with another (old) router capable of only 2-octect ASN (that is: not supporting RFC-4893) will send an 'Open' message containing the 'My AS' field with the dedicated value "23456" (see RFC).

The impact this will have on the 'old' BGP speaker is that this 'old' BGP speaker believes it is peering with Autonomous System ‘23456’ (a two byte AS) instead of the real 4-octet AS.