Hello Jaspreet
First of all, I apologize for the late reply. There was a glitch in our system and your post fell through the cracks, I sincerely apologise.
Now on to your question. Remember that in order for BGP multipalth load sharing to take place between two or more paths, the following attributes of all candidate paths must be the same:
- Weight
- Local Preference
- AS Path (both AS number and AS path length)
- Origin code
- MED
- IGP metric
If any of those attributes are different then the second path will not be considered.
Now the bestpath as-path multipath-relax command is used to “relax” the requirement of having the same AS numbers in the AS path, but it doesn’t relax the requirement of checking the AS path length. In your Situation2, you have a different AS Path length, so it doesn’t consider the second path as eligible for multipath load balancing, so it doesn’t apply it. So you are correct, it is the different AS Path Length that is at issue. Does that make sense?
I hope this has been helpful!
Laz