A.2.3 Encapsulation

Encapsulation provides the simplest (in terms of the interaction between the IGP and BGP) mechanism for carrying transit traffic across the AS. In this approach, transit traffic is encapsulated within an IP datagram addressed to the exit gateway. The only requirement imposed on the IGP by this approach is that it should be capable of supporting routing between border gateways within the same AS.

The address of the exit gateway A for some exterior destination X is specified in the BGP identifier field of the BGP OPEN message received from gateway A (via BGP) by all other border gateways within the same AS. In order to route traffic to destination X, each border gateway within the AS encapsulates it in datagrams addressed to gateway A. Gateway A then performs decapsulation and forwards the original packet to the proper gateway in another AS.

Since encapsulation does not rely on the IGP to carry exterior routing information, no synchronization between BGP and the IGP is required.

Some means of identifying datagrams containing encapsulated IP, such as an IP protocol type code, must be defined if this method is to be used.

Note that, if a packet to be encapsulated has length that is very close to the MTU, that packet would be fragmented at the gateway that performs encapsulation.