Cisco Router: Soft and Hard boot of BGP

Contributed by aaronm March 15, 2006  
Tagged: Cisco router

Simple commands to reset BGP as a first step troubleshooting technique

There are two types of BGP “reboot” commands: soft and hard. You can also reset BGP in the direction of traffic flow with a soft reboot.

Router#> clear ip bgp * soft in
or
Router#> clear ip bgp * soft out


When you do a soft boot of BGP, you won’t lose connectivity, so this is a great first step. The * indicates all routes, but you can specify networks if you want.

The next step is a hard boot of BGP. This completely resets the protocol and you will lose connectivity for the next couple minutes (depending on the router).
router #> clear ip bgp *


This will solve many BGP related problems. I’m sure there are more uses and nuances to these statements, but it’s a good start for everyday admins.