A route reflector is a BGP router that is allowed to break the iBGP loop avoidance rule and advertise routes received from an iBGP peer to another iBGP peer under specific conditions 1 .  A route reflector can have three types of peerings: EBGP neighbor, IBGP client neighbor, and IBGP non-client neighbor 2 .  A cluster is a group of route reflectors and their clients that are fully meshed 3 .  The cluster ID is a 4-byte value that identifies the route reflector cluster and is carried in the ORIGINATOR_ID attribute of the BGP update message 4 . The cluster ID is used to prevent routing loops among route reflectors and their clients.  If a route reflector receives a route with its own cluster ID, it discards the route 5 . Therefore, the cluster ID is required to prevent routing loops when using route reflectors.