Ran into an interesting situation with inter-provider VPNs.

When setting up the ASBR peering, I got the BGP setup before adding family mpls to the interface. And when I checked IBGP advertisements, I got this:

 lab@R3> show route advertising-protocol bgp 172.27.255.1 

 inet.0: 22 destinations, 22 routes (22 active, 0 holddown, 0 hidden)
   Prefix                  Nexthop              MED     Lclpref    AS path
 * 95.100.255.2/32         Self                 1       100        60001 I

 inet.3: 4 destinations, 4 routes (4 active, 0 holddown, 0 hidden)
   Prefix                  Nexthop              MED     Lclpref    AS path
 * 95.100.255.2/32         Not advertised       1       100        60001 I

Uh Oh… “Not Advertised”… Let’s check to see what’s up.

lab@R3> show route advertising-protocol bgp 172.27.255.1 extensive 

 inet.3: 4 destinations, 4 routes (4 active, 0 holddown, 0 hidden)

 * 95.100.255.2/32 (1 entry, 1 announced)
 BGP group internal type Internal
      BGP label allocation failure: family mpls not enabled on interface
      Nexthop: Not advertised
      Flags: Nexthop Change
      MED: 1
      Localpref: 100
      AS path: [3895077211] 60001 I

Hmmmm… That’s strange. I thought I enabled it…

 [edit interfaces ge-0/0/4]
 lab@R3# show 
 description "Connection to P-1";
 unit 0 {
     family inet {
         address 172.27.0.57/30;
     }
     family mpls;
 }

Yeah… there it is. What if I try to clear soft-in?

 lab@R3> clear bgp neighbor 172.27.0.58 soft-inbound 

 inet.3: 4 destinations, 4 routes (4 active, 0 holddown, 0 hidden)

 * 95.100.255.2/32 (1 entry, 1 announced)
 BGP group internal type Internal
      BGP label allocation failure: family mpls not enabled on interface
      Nexthop: Not advertised
      Flags: Nexthop Change
      MED: 1
      Localpref: 100
      AS path: [3895077211] 60001 I

Nope… no go. Looks like we get to wait 30+ seconds. :)

 lab@R3> clear bgp neighbor 172.27.0.58                                
 Cleared 1 connections

Now to go get some coffee…

 lab@R3> show route advertising-protocol bgp 172.27.255.1 extensive    

 inet.0: 22 destinations, 22 routes (22 active, 0 holddown, 0 hidden)
 * 95.100.255.2/32 (1 entry, 1 announced)
 BGP group internal type Internal
      Nexthop: Self
      Flags: Nexthop Change
      MED: 1
      Localpref: 100
      AS path: [3895077211] 60001 I

 inet.3: 4 destinations, 4 routes (4 active, 0 holddown, 0 hidden)

 * 95.100.255.2/32 (1 entry, 1 announced)
 BGP group internal type Internal
      Route Label: 299952
      Nexthop: Self
      Flags: Nexthop Change
      MED: 1
      Localpref: 100
      AS path: [3895077211] 60001 I

That looks much better!