Google Cloud's BGP route policies for Cloud Router have been generally available for over a year, and this post highlights the three most impactful customer use cases. First, route filtering and network protection — using CEL-based policies to create 'fail closed' environments that prevent BGP hijacking and routing loops. Second, influencing traffic paths for active/standby architectures by dynamically modifying MED attributes and using AS-PATH prepending without touching on-premises hardware. Third, solving asymmetric routing with BGP communities — tagging routes on-premises so Cloud Router can read them and adjust route preferences to ensure stateful traffic symmetry. The post also announces policy named sets, which allow grouping prefixes or BGP communities into reusable entities to simplify large-scale routing configurations.
