BGP Advisory Message

The BGP routing protocol is used with external as well as internal neighbors to propagate route advertisements. In the case of external BGP sessions, there is typically a demarcation of administrative responsibility between the two entities. Provisioning, maintenance and administrative actions are communicated via off-line methods such as email or telephone calls. While these methods have been used for many years, it can be troublesome for an operator to correlate a BGP- related event in the network with a notice that was transmitted in email. This document proposes a new BGP message type, the Advisory message, which can be used to convey advisory information to a BGP speaker's peer. A capability is used to ensure that the recipient of the Advisory message is capable of supporting it.