BGP Configuration Guide for Cisco 8000 Series Routers, Cisco IOS XR Releases

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Neighbor capability suppressions

Updated: February 28, 2026

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Overview

Describes disabling capability negotiation during BGP session establishment to ensure interoperability with legacy devices lacking capability support.

Neighbor capability suppression is a BGP feature that

  • disables capability negotiation between BGP peers during the Open message exchange

  • ensures interoperability with legacy devices that do not support the Capabilities option, and

  • allows BGP sessions to be established even if the peer does not understand capabilities negotiation.

In BGP, capability negotiation is a mechanism that allows peers to exchange information about supported protocol extensions during session establishment. By default, BGP peers use this feature to agree on features they both support. However, some older customer premises equipment (CPE) devices do not recognize the Capabilities option, which can prevent successful BGP session setup. The neighbor capability suppression feature disables this negotiation in the Open message, enabling compatibility with such legacy devices.

Suppress BGP neighbor capabilities

Disable BGP capability negotiation during the Open message exchange for compatibility with legacy devices.

Context: Use when peering with devices that do not support BGP capabilities negotiation.

Before you begin

None

Procedure

1.

Run the configure command to enter global configuration mode.

Example:

Router#configure
2.

Enter BGP configuration mode with your AS number and specify the neighbor.

Example:

Router(config)# router bgp 100
Router(config-bgp)# neighbor 172.16.40.24
3.

Run the capability suppress all command to suppress all capabilities to the neighbor and save the configuration.

Example:

Router(config-bgp-nbr)# capability suppress all
Router(config-bgp-nbr)# commit

Capabilities negotiation is disabled for the specified neighbor.