show ip bgp summary

BGP peer states and prefix counts per neighbour.

routing

What it does

The State/PfxRcd column carries the answer: a number means the session is established and that many prefixes were accepted. A word (Idle, Active, Connect) means it is not established.

Per vendor

PlatformCommand
Cisco IOS / NX-OSshow ip bgp summary
Juniper JunOSshow bgp summary
MikroTik RouterOS/routing bgp peer print status
FortiOSget router info bgp summary

Useful variations

  • Everything from one neighbourshow ip bgp neighbors 192.0.2.1 received-routes
  • Paths for one prefixshow ip bgp 10.20.0.0/16

Pitfalls

The misreadings that actually cost people time.

  • 'Idle (Admin)' is a shutdown neighbour, not a failure.
  • Active means it is trying and failing to connect — usually TCP/179 blocked, or a wrong peer address.
  • PfxRcd stuck at the maximum-prefix limit means the session was torn down for exceeding it.
  • `received-routes` needs soft-reconfiguration inbound, or it returns nothing on IOS.

Related

show ip routeshow ip ospf neighbor