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

BGP-RIB feedback mechanisms

Updated: February 28, 2026

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Overview

Details BGP-RIB feedback mechanisms, including steps to configure BGP routers to wait for feedback before sending updates, enhancing routing stability and update efficiency.

A BGP-RIB feedback mechanism is a route advertisement control feature that

ensures that BGP announces routes to neighbors only after they are fully installed in the data plane
relies on coordination between the Routing Information Base (RIB) and the Forwarding Information Base (FIB) to track route installation status, and
prevents premature route advertisements that could otherwise cause packet loss during events such as router reloads or link failures.

Operation of the BGP-RIB feedback process

This mechanism works by having BGP wait for confirmation from the RIB that the installed routes are also present in the FIB. The RIB uses the BCDL feedback process to determine which versions of routes have been installed in the FIB and reports this information back to BGP.

Benefits of BGP-RIB feedback mechanisms

BGP only advertises routes that have been confirmed as fully installed, ensuring that network traffic is not directed to unprogrammed or unavailable paths. This enhances network reliability and prevents blackholing of traffic after topology changes.

Configure BGP to wait for feedback before sending updates

Ensure that BGP only advertises routes to neighbors after those routes are fully installed in the forwarding plane, preventing premature route announcements and possible packet loss.

Before you begin

Ensure that changes to route advertisement timing are acceptable for your network’s convergence policies.

Follow these steps to configure BGP to wait for feedback before sending updates to neighbors.

Procedure

	1.	Use the update wait-install command to configure BGP to wait for RIB to confirm FIB installation before advertising routes. Example: `Router# configure Router(config)# router bgp 65500 Router(config-bgp)# address-family vpnv4 unicast Router(config-bgp-af)# update wait-install`
	2.	Use the commands show bgp , show bgp neighbors , or show bgp process performance-statistics to verify and monitor the status.

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