Which of the following states does BGP wait for Open messages from peers?

Question

Options

• AActive
• BConnect
• COpen Sent
• DOpen Confirm

• A
  7% (2)
• B
  4% (1)
• C
  7% (2)
• D
  82% (23)

Explanation

There appears to be an error in the provided answer key. Based on RFC 4271 and standard BGP behavior, the correct answer to this question is C (Open Sent), not D (Open Confirm).

In the Open Sent state, the local BGP speaker has transmitted its own OPEN message and is actively waiting to receive an OPEN message back from the peer. Once that peer OPEN message arrives and is validated, the session transitions to Open Confirm, where BGP is no longer waiting for OPEN messages but is instead waiting for a KEEPALIVE (to finalize the session) or a NOTIFICATION (to signal an error).

The distractors are wrong for the following reasons: Active (A) is the state where BGP is trying to establish a TCP connection by listening and retrying, not exchanging OPEN messages. Connect (B) is the state where BGP is waiting for the initial TCP connection to complete before any BGP messages are sent. Open Confirm (D) has already received the OPEN message from the peer and is past that stage, now waiting only for KEEPALIVE or NOTIFICATION.

Memory tip: The name "Open Sent" tells you exactly what happened and what comes next. You Sent the OPEN, so now you wait to Receive one back. Once you are in "Open Confirm," the OPEN exchange is complete and you are confirming the session via KEEPALIVE.

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