An incorrectly configured routing policy at your service provider led to several hundred thousand routes...

When a peer incorrectly floods your router with an excessive number of routes, it can exhaust system resources and crash the routing engine.

Prefix-Limit (Option B):The prefix-limit (or accepted-prefix-limit) parameter is the primary defense against such "route leaks".

You can set amaximum thresholdfor the number of prefixes allowed from a specific BGP neighbor or group.

When the limit is reached, Junos can be configured to either just log a warning ortear down the BGP sessionentirely (using the teardown keyword) to protect the router.

This prevents the "hundreds of thousand routes" from ever being fully processed or installed into the main routing table.

Damping (Option A):Damping is used to suppress unstable, "flapping" routes, but it does not limit the total volume of stable routes received.