Lab 9: Path Selection with Weight (First Tiebreaker)
In this advanced CCNP BGP lab, you will steer a single router's outbound path choice using Cisco's Weight attribute, the very first BGP best-path tiebreaker. R1 (AS 65001) peers eBGP with two ISPs (R2 in AS 65002 and R3 in AS 65003). Both ISPs advertise the same prefix 172.16.50.0/24. Your job is to make R1 prefer the R3 path using the neighbor weight command and verify the outcome using IOS and Linux tools.
Inbound Steering: AS-Path Prepending (Primary/Backup eBGP)
Advanced CCNP BGP lab: Build parallel eBGP sessions between two ASes over primary and backup /30 links. Originate a service prefix from AS 65001 and influence AS 65002's inbound path by applying outbound AS-path prepending on the backup session only. Validate best-path selection and next-hop on the neighbor, and confirm reachability from hosts.
BGP Lab 5: Local Preference - Preferred Exit
Configure and validate BGP local-preference to prefer one provider when the same destination prefix is learned from two eBGP neighbors. You will see two equal AS-PATH routes to 172.16.100.0/24 on the edge router and then apply an inbound route-map on the R2 session to set local-preference 200 so the edge prefers exiting via R2. Verification includes host pings/traceroute and router BGP best-path checks.