LocalAS
When two companies merge, one of the ASNs is usually returned to the regional Internet registry (RIR). During the migration, each company needs to maintain its own ASN while changes are made with its peering neighbors to update their configuration.
The LocalAS feature is configured on a per peer basis, and allows for BGP sessions to establish using an alternate ASN than the ASN that the BGP process is running on. The LocalAS feature works only with EBGP peerings.
IOS nodes use the BGP address-family neighbor configuration command neighbor ip-address local-as alternate-as-number [no-prepend [replace-as [dual-as]]]. IOS XR and NX-OS devices use the equivalent command local-as alternate-as-number [no-prepend [replace-as [dual-as]]] under the neighbor. By default, the alternate ASN is added to the AS-Path for routes that are sent and received between these two peers.
One problem with the alternate ASN being prepended when receiving the routes is that other IBGP peers drop the network prefixes as part of a routing loop detection.
To stop the alternate ASN from being prepended when receiving routes, the optional keyword no-prepend is used.
To stop the alternate ASN from being prepended when sending routes, the optional keywords no-prepend replace-as is used.
If both no-prepend replace-as keywords are used, all routers see the BGP advertisements as if they were running the original AS in the BGP process.
After the remote peer changes the remote-as setting on the BGP configuration, the local-as commands should be removed. If the coordination of maintenance windows cannot occur during the same time, the no-prepend replace-as dual-as optional keywords allow the remote peer to user either ASN for the BGP session. The remote BGP router peers with the ASN in the router process statement, or the alternate ASN in the local-as configuration.