BGP Prefix Independent Convergence for inet

BGP Prefix Independent Convergence (PIC), which was initially supported for Layer 3 VPN routers, is extended to BGP with multiple routes in the global tables such as inet and inet6 unicast, and inet and inet6 labeled unicast. When the BGP PIC feature is enabled on a router, BGP installs to the Packet Forwarding Engine the second best path in addition to the calculated best path to a destination. When an IGP loses reachability to a prefix, the router uses this backup path to minimize traffic loss until the global convergence through the BGP is resolved, thereby drastically reducing the outage duration.