BGP Models App

The Nautobot BGP Models App extends your Network Source of Truth with data models designed specifically for Border Gateway Protocol (BGP). It empowers teams to natively model autonomous systems, routing instances, peer groups, and BGP peerings directly within their network source of truth. By centralizing BGP relationships and configuration data in Nautobot, you can standardize routing information, automate configuration generation, and maintain consistent visibility across internal and external BGP relationships.

BGP infrastructure is difficult to represent in traditional network inventories

BGP is one of the most critical components of modern networks, but most infrastructure management platforms struggle to represent it accurately. Traditional network inventories focus on devices, interfaces, and topology, while BGP relationships span multiple devices, autonomous systems, and external peers.

As a result, many organizations manage BGP information outside their primary source of truth using spreadsheets, static documentation, or fragmented configuration files.

This creates several operational challenges:

• Peer relationships are difficult to track and validate across large environments
• External peers such as ISPs or transit providers may not exist as modeled devices
• Configuration data is scattered across templates, scripts, and device configurations
• Engineers lack a centralized view of BGP routing architecture
• Automation workflows cannot reliably consume structured BGP data

Without a consistent data model for routing relationships, network automation initiatives struggle to generate reliable intended configurations or maintain accurate visibility into routing state.

Bottom line:
If BGP relationships are not modeled in the source of truth, automation pipelines lack the structured data required to reliably generate and validate routing configurations.

Extend Nautobot with a structured BGP data model

The BGP Models App introduces a set of purpose-built data models that allow organizations to represent BGP infrastructure in a structured and automation-friendly format. These models extend Nautobot’s core data model so BGP information becomes part of the same authoritative system used for topology, IPAM, and device inventory.

This allows network teams to treat BGP configuration as structured data rather than scattered configuration text.

Model Autonomous Systems

The app introduces an Autonomous System (AS) model that allows teams to represent network-wide ASNs and their associated metadata.

This provides a consistent way to track:

• Internal autonomous systems
• External provider ASNs
• ASN ranges assigned to organizations or tenants
• Relationships between ASNs and network providers

Representing ASNs centrally enables routing architecture to be managed consistently across devices and locations.

Represent BGP Routing Instances

The BGP Routing Instance model represents a device-specific BGP process. This allows Nautobot to associate BGP configuration with specific devices while still maintaining a network-wide view of routing relationships.

Routing instances can include attributes such as:

• Router IDs
• Associated autonomous systems
• Device relationships
• Additional routing attributes defined by the organization

This creates a clear link between device configuration and network-wide routing architecture.

Standardize Peer Groups and Templates

Large environments frequently rely on peer groups to simplify BGP configuration.

The BGP Models App supports this by introducing:

• Peer Group Templates for network-wide configuration patterns
• Peer Groups for device-specific implementations of those templates

This structure allows teams to define standardized peering configurations and apply them consistently across devices.

Model BGP Peerings and Endpoints

The app models a BGP relationship as a Peering object that contains two peer endpoints representing each side of the connection.

Each endpoint can define attributes such as:

• IP address
• Autonomous system
• Routing instance
• Peer group membership
• Address-family specific configuration

This structure allows Nautobot to represent both internal peerings (iBGP) and external peerings (eBGP), even when the remote device is not modeled in Nautobot.

Fuel automation and dynamic configuration generation

BGP data is transformed into structured, automation-ready data, stored in Nautobot. Your  automation pipelines can reliably consume this authoritative source through:

• REST APIs
• GraphQL queries
• Jinja2 configuration templates
• automation frameworks and CI/CD pipelines

For example, automation systems can query Nautobot for device routing data and generate intended BGP configurations automatically.

This transforms BGP configuration by eliminating reliance on manually maintained text into structured network data that your automation systems can query for device routing data and generate validated BGP configurations automatically.