What information does the 'show ip bgp neighbors' command tell you?

• A. BGP neighbor, remote AS, BGP state, BGP version, remote router-id, hold time, keepalive time, neighbor capabilities, message statistics, whether internal or external link and address families
• B. Only the neighbor IPs
• C. The entire IPv4 routing table
• D. The list of interfaces on the router

Answer: (A)

This command exposes the details of each BGP peering session with a neighbor. It shows the neighbor’s IP, the remote ASN, and the current BGP session state, along with the BGP version in use and the neighbor’s router-id. It also reveals the negotiated timing parameters (hold time and keepalive) and the capabilities the neighbor has advertised or negotiated (for example route refresh, graceful restart, 4-byte AS support). In addition, you get message statistics for that session and an indication of whether the peering is internal (iBGP) or external (eBGP), plus which address families are active for that neighbor.

This combination of per-neighbor diagnostics is exactly what you’d want for verifying that a session is up and correctly configured and for troubleshooting peering issues. It’s not just listing neighbor IPs, it doesn’t display the entire IPv4 routing table, and it doesn’t enumerate router interfaces.