What does BGP acceptedPrefixCounter mean?

Hi I’m working on a project with BGP and I’ve seen this “acceptedPrefixCounter”: 0 appear sometimes. I’m curious to know what that means because I’ve searched everywhere on the net and haven’t found anything.

Hello Nathan

Although I am not familiar with this particular variable with the formatting you present, I am given the impression that this has to do with the BGP maximum prefix feature.

BGP peers will keep track of the number of prefixes they have received from a BGP neighbor. If this value exceeds the maximum prefix limit (which is configurable of course), a router will respond in some way, such as dropping the peering with the offending neighbor. This is a useful feature to protect a router from receiving more prefixes than its memory can handle. If the overwhelmed router is also performing critical routing, an extensively large number of prefixes can cause the router to fail. Thus, with this maximum prefix limit, the router can be protected from such situations.

The Accepted Prefix Counter may be the variable that keeps track of the number of prefixes received against which the maximum is checked. The variable as you present it also reminds me of a Python script. Is this part of a script you are putting together?

It would be helpful if you shared with us under what circumstances you saw this particular variable so that we can respond in a more complete manner.

I hope this has been helpful!

Laz