Beyond SNMP: Why BGP Monitoring Protocol (BMP) is the Future of Core Network Visibility
Preface: In today’s high-performance networks, being able to monitor and troubleshoot BGP in real time is key to routing stability, anomaly detection and service availability. While SNMP has been the industry standard for network device monitoring, its limitations become apparent in BGP-heavy environments where per-peer, per-route dynamics are critical. SNMP, designed for general device metrics like CPU, memory and interface counters, only provides high-level BGP stats (number of prefixes received or advertised) through standard MIBs. It doesn’t have the granularity to monitor individual route advertisements, withdrawals or policy impacts in real time. This is where BGP Monitoring Protocol (BMP) shines: BMP provides a non-intrusive, event-driven feed of BGP info from the router to an external collector, giving instant visibility into BGP session events, RIB changes and policy applications . Imagine a real-world scenario where a network operator suspects a BGP route leak...