BGP Idle/Active

[netbeginner]

Dear Experts, Please help to know the difference between below two BGP peering cases. 1) BGP activity 253/250 prefixes, 253/250 paths, scan interval 60 secs Neighbor V AS MsgRcvd MsgSent TblVer InQ OutQ Up/Down State/PfxRcd 10.8.20.9 4 900 0 0 1 0 0 25w10d Active Here BGP peering showing UP and peered since 25W however State is toggling between Active / Idle. ++++++ 2) BGP table version is 1, main routing table version 1 Neighbor V AS MsgRcvd MsgSent TblVer InQ OutQ Up/Down State /PfxRcd 10.8.20.5 4 300 0 0 1 0 0 never Idle Here BGP peering never came UP, State is toggling between Idle/Active Rgds

[Mark Malone]

If the states are in idle or active there not working needs to be established and you should see a prefix count under state/pfxrcd section in show ip bgp summ , sounds like one of them was up and failed and the other one has never been up
if its idle its not even trying to setup a connection , if the state is active its actively trying to setup a session