BGP Production Readiness Checklist

Checklist discipline. Every item is meant to be answered yes / no with evidence. Items marked critical are non-negotiable; items marked warn are judgement calls; items marked info are baseline expectations.

Items

• Local AS number documented (severity: info)
• Router ID explicit and unique (severity: info)
• Source address for BGP session explicit (severity: info)
• MD5 / TCP-AO authentication on every peer (severity: critical)
• TTL security (ebgp-multihop) configured for multi-hop peers (severity: warn)
• max-prefix configured on every peer (severity: critical)
• Inbound prefix-list applied to every eBGP peer (severity: critical)
• Outbound prefix-list applied to every eBGP peer (severity: critical)
• Outbound filter blocks internal / RFC1918 prefixes (severity: critical)
• Community policy aligned with upstream / downstream (severity: info)
• Route-map / filter naming convention followed (severity: info)
• BGP session state monitoring configured (severity: info)
• BGP RIB size monitored and alerted (severity: warn)
• BGP convergence test performed in canary (severity: warn)

Severity legend

• info: baseline expectation
• warn: judgement call; production-grade depends on context
• critical: non-negotiable; a missed critical item is a release blocker

Evidence retention

The completed checklist is evidence for the change ticket, the audit, and the post-incident review. Store it where it can be recovered if the router is lost.