BGP Path Record Attribute

The BGP protocol contains number of built in mechanisms which records information about the routers which have processed a specific piece of reachability information critical to insuring only loop free paths are chosen by the protocol. For instance, the AS_PATH, CLUSTER_LIST and ORIGINATOR_ID attributes carry information designed to insure permanent routing loops are not formed in the path chosen towards a particular destination. However, there are no provisions to record other useful information along the path, metadata about the routers through which reachability information has passed which can be helpful to the operator in order to enhance end to end visibility of the BGP control plane. In order to solve this problem this document proposes a new single BGP attribute designed as an generic and extensible container to carry number of new optional information corresponding to the BGP speakers given BGP advertisement (or withdraw) message traverses.