Number of Route Reflector Nodes

[CJM]

Hi all!

I'm changing RR nodes from a customer core. Currently, they have 2 CPDs interconnected by an MPLS network. Inside this network, there are two nodes acting as Route Reflector.

All the BGP environments I have worked with use a pair of RR, and all the documentation I have read show examples using only two nodes in a single cluster, but I was wondering if it has sense to add more nodes to the RR cluster (eg. two nodes per CPD) in case I would like to add redundancy inside each CPD.

Budget is not an issue, as I have two nodes in Spare. 

I know activating two more nodes will duplicate all BGP sessions with RR clients. Appart from that, is there any other technical or operting issue with a 4 RR dessign? I haven't found any literature about this dessign case.

Thanks in advance!!!

[Julio E. Moisa]

Hi

Usually they are 2 nodes primary and backup, these devices should be robust routers. You could have more than 2 but it could increase the complexity on the management and also you must configure different clusters ID to avoid loops. 

Hope it is useful

:-)

[CJM]

Hi Julio!

First of all, thanks a lot for your quick response!!!

Could you please develop a little bit this statement: "you must configure different clusters ID to avoid loops"?

I haven't seen that there's any limitation about the number of nodes in a cluster, so why it would be necessary to split them into two clusters ids? 

In my previous post I forgot to mention that RR nodes don't belong to data plane, so data traffic never cross them.

Thanks again!!!! :)