From the BGP Design point of view (HLD), there are four options to manipulate the inbound traffic, MED, AS-path prepending, using communities, and breaking aggregated routes.
MED
This is not really useful, as it has to meet some conditions:
- The AS-path of learned routes should be identical. Thus, this could be only useful when multihoming to the same AS.
- The BGP peer might use Local-Preference in the Path Selection process.
- Usually, Service Providers reset or strip received MED.
AS-Path Prepending
It’s not always helpful.