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

64-way multipath ECMP

Updated: February 28, 2026

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Overview

Describes the support for up to 64 equal-cost multipath next hops in BGP and the ability to load balance traffic over multiple LSPs to increase bandwidth utilization.

64-way multipath ECMP is a BGP feature that

supports configuration of up to 64 equal-cost multipath (ECMP) next hops for BGP, and
enables overloaded routers to load balance traffic over up to 64 LSPs.

ECMP routing is a routing strategy that

enables next-hop packet forwarding to a single destination over multiple best paths which tie for top place in routing metric calculations
can be used with most routing protocols as it is a per-hop decision limited to a single router, and
potentially offers substantial increases in bandwidth by load-balancing traffic over multiple paths.

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