A method and apparatus are disclosed for accelerating Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) route convergence in an autonomous system. A virtual link identifier is assigned to each link of a set of communication links that are established between a BGP host and one or more network elements in one or more networks. For a particular link of the set of communication links, one or more routes that are reachable on the link are determined. The BGP host stores an association of the one or more routes with a BGP identifier of the BGP host and the virtual link identifier that is assigned to the particular link. The BGP host advertises the one or more routes to a BGP peer in a message, where the message includes the BGP identifier and the virtual link identifier.