--- title: Use BGP Communities in Routing Policies « BGP Labs description: A hands-on BGP lab exercise focused on implementing the ISP side of a BGP community-based routing policy. The lab walks through configuring a route-map that... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/use-bgp-communities-in-routing-policies-bgp-labs-gvwnqyu5g twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Use BGP Communities in Routing Policies « BGP Labs | daily.dev og:description: A hands-on BGP lab exercise focused on implementing the ISP side of a BGP community-based routing policy. The lab walks through configuring a route-map that... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/use-bgp-communities-in-routing-policies-bgp-labs-gvwnqyu5g og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/gvWNqYu5G.png og:image:alt: Use BGP Communities in Routing Policies « BGP Labs og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Use BGP Communities in Routing Policies « BGP Labs **[ipSpace.net Blog](https://daily.dev/sources/ipspace)** · 5 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A hands-on BGP lab exercise focused on implementing the ISP side of a BGP community-based routing policy. The lab walks through configuring a route-map that reads the BGP community 65000:50 attached to incoming customer routes and sets local preference to 50 (backup path) while defaulting other routes to local preference 200. Covers creating community-list objects, building route-maps with match/set clauses, applying them to BGP neighbors, and using soft-reset to re-evaluate existing routes. Validation is supported on Arista EOS and FRRouting via netlab. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### How do I set BGP local preference based on a BGP community value in a route-map? Create a community-list matching the target community (e.g., 65000:50), then build a route-map with two entries: one that matches the community-list and sets local-preference to 50, and a second catch-all entry that sets local-preference to 200. Apply the route-map inbound on all BGP neighbors with 'neighbor route-map in', then run 'clear ip bgp * soft in' to re-evaluate existing routes. _Network engineers tuning BGP traffic engineering policies find the full lab walkthrough and config examples on daily.dev._ ### Why doesn't my BGP route-map take effect immediately after I apply it to a neighbor? BGP routing policies are typically evaluated only on new incoming updates, not retroactively on already-received routes. After applying a new inbound route-map, you must trigger a soft reset using a command like 'clear ip bgp * soft in' to ask neighbors to resend their updates so the new policy is applied to existing routes. _BGP operators troubleshooting policy changes like this share solutions and lab exercises on daily.dev._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [BGP route policies: Top 3 use cases by customer demand](https://daily.dev/posts/bgp-route-policies-top-3-use-cases-by-customer-demand-3wr4btbgi) · Google Cloud · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [BGP-Free Core with SR-MPLS « ipSpace.net blog](https://daily.dev/posts/bgp-free-core-with-sr-mpls-ipspace-net-blog-h7kronzy3) · ipSpace.net Blog · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#bgp](https://daily.dev/tags/bgp) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/use-bgp-communities-in-routing-policies-bgp-labs-gvwnqyu5g) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Use BGP Communities in Routing Policies « BGP Labs","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/use-bgp-communities-in-routing-policies-bgp-labs-gvwnqyu5g","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/use-bgp-communities-in-routing-policies-bgp-labs-gvwnqyu5g"},"datePublished":"2026-08-11T08:55:43.018Z","dateModified":"2026-08-11T09:38:29.766Z","description":"A hands-on BGP lab exercise focused on implementing the ISP side of a BGP community-based routing policy. 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