The following example shows the output of the show ip bgp command for router R1 at this stage of the configuration.

vyatta@R1:~$ show ip bgp
BGP table version is 36, local router ID is 10.0.0.11
Status codes: s suppressed, d damped, h history, * valid, > best, i - internal, l - labeled
              S Stale
Origin codes: i - IGP, e - EGP, ? - incomplete

   Network          Next Hop            Metric LocPrf Weight Path
*>i10.0.0.0         99.99.99.2               0    100      0 300 i
*> 12.0.0.0         88.88.88.2               0             0 200 i
*>i172.16.0.0/12    99.99.99.2               0    100      0 300 i
*>i172.16.0.0/24    10.0.0.44                0    100      0 i
*>i192.168.0.0/16   99.99.99.2               0    100      0 300 i

Total number of prefixes 5

From this output we can see that R1 knows about twelve prefixes within BGP, five from AS200 and seven from AS300.

There are two symbols that are displayed at the beginning of each of the prefixes shown in the output of show ip bgp. The first symbol is the status code for a valid route, which is an asterisk (“*”). Essentially, all routes shown in the BGP table should be preceded by this symbol. The second symbol is the greater than character (“>”), which indicates which path is the best available path as determined by the BGP best path selection process. The show ip bgp command shows only the best path to each peer.