Apply BGP flap damping: accumulate penalty per flap, compare to the suppress limit and get the suppression time.
Damping is an exponential-decay counter per prefix: penalties add up and bleed off over time, and the route is held back while the counter is above the suppress threshold. The penalty ceiling is reuse limit × 2^(max suppress ÷ half-life), which is what stops a badly behaved prefix being suppressed indefinitely. With defaults just two flaps suppress a prefix for around 30 minutes, which is why RFC 7196 and RIPE-580 recommend far higher thresholds — classic damping punishes normal path exploration on multihomed prefixes far harder than intended.
Route Flap
Each flap adds a fixed penalty (1000 by default); the penalty decays exponentially with a half-life, and the route is suppressed while it sits above the suppress limit.
Exponential decay
Time to reuse = half-life × log2(penalty ÷ reuse limit), capped at the maximum suppress time.
Each flap adds a fixed penalty (1000 by default); the penalty decays exponentially with a half-life, and the route is suppressed while it sits above the suppress limit. Damping is an exponential-decay counter per prefix: penalties add up and bleed off over time, and the route is held back while the counter is above the suppress threshold. The penalty ceiling is reuse limit × 2^(max suppress ÷ half-life), which is what stops a badly behaved prefix being suppressed indefinitely.
With defaults just two flaps suppress a prefix for around 30 minutes, which is why RFC 7196 and RIPE-580 recommend far higher thresholds — classic damping punishes normal path exploration on multihomed prefixes far harder than intended.
This calculator takes 6 inputs: Flaps observed, Penalty per flap, Half-life, Suppress limit, Reuse limit, Maximum suppress time. The pre-filled defaults are a realistic starting point — replace them with figures from your own environment for a result you can act on.
Only with retuned values. RIPE-580 recommends leaving it off or raising the suppress threshold well above the defaults, because normal BGP path hunting generates enough withdrawals to suppress perfectly healthy prefixes for half an hour.