Question

A network engineer connects an on-premises Cisco IOS XE router to Google Cloud using two HA VPN tunnels, each terminating on a separate Cloud Router BGP interface in the same region. The on-premises router establishes eBGP sessions over both tunnels and receives identical prefixes from Google Cloud with the same AS-path length and MED. The engineer wants outbound traffic from on-premises to actively use both tunnels simultaneously for the cloud-bound prefixes. What must be configured on the Cisco IOS XE router to achieve this?

Accepted Answer

Enable 'maximum-paths 2' under the BGP address-family so equal-cost eBGP paths are installed for load sharing

Answer

Configure a lower local-preference on one tunnel's received routes to force deterministic primary/backup behavior

Answer

Apply 'bgp bestpath as-path multipath-relax' only, without any maximum-paths statement

Answer

Prepend the AS-path on one eBGP neighbor so both paths appear equal and are automatically used