1
BGP made easy
John van Oppen
Wave / Spectrum
AS11404
What is BGP?
Snarky answer: RFC-4271
BGP is an Exterior gateway protocol, the only one used
on the public Internet and is used for inter-Autonomous
System routing. (IE between discrete networks)
BGP distributes (signals) the path to every destination on
the Internet, the core of major providers typically dont
contain a default route, they contain the paths to every
prefix on the Internet.
BGP learns multiple paths to a given route and selects
the best path, only best path is sent between routers.
What is an Autonomous System?
Typical traits:
Usually a network of one or more routers redundantly
interconnected.
Controlled by a single administrative domain (one
company could have several ASNs but a given ASN is
typically controlled by a specific group)
Common routing policy
Identified by a globally unique AS Number (ASN)
Typical rationales for running BGP
Multihoming / Provider redundancy
Equipment / Port redundancy
Peering (typically larger ASes)
Connectivity quality (better paths)
Types of peering relationships
Transit (routes that cost money to send traffic
across)
Peering (typically free, you see my customers, I see
yours without charge) - peers across NWAX would
be a good example of this type of relationship
Customer (routes that are sourced from paying
customers)
Typically type of relationship dictates localpreference setting (50, 95 and 110 in this example)
Enforcing relationships across peers
Typical problem: I dont want to send
routes received from my transit to
someone who does not pay me.
Common solution: AS-path filtering,
prefixes lists or a combination.
Best solution: add in community strings as
tags, filter on ingress.
Filtering tools for BGP routes (cisco)
Prefix lists can be applied directly to
BGP peer configuration
Route maps can match various things,
the most important for BGP are:
prefix lists
As-path access lists
Community lists
Metric
Communities, tags for routes!
Community strings allow routes to be tagged at ingress with to
tell the rest of the AS what to do with them.
Filtering only at ingress works for very small ASNs and very large
ASNs.
Allows for large ASes with lots of customer routes to scale by
only filtering on customer sessions.
Egress filter policy can be setup to deny by default (IE no
community of the right type attached to route means the
route is not exported).
Allows easy filtering to prevent internal routes from being sent
to customers .
Examples of community
assignments from AS11404
Communities used in examples:
11404:991 announce to customers
11404:992 announce to peers and customers
11404:993 announce to transit, peers and customers
11404:1000 All transit routes
11404:2000 All Peer routes
http://as11404.net has more of a list if you want a broader
example.
10
Filtering in action (towards a customer)
Cisco example, showing basic portions of the BGP filtering configuration
neighbor 192.0.2.2 remote-as 54858
neighbor 192.0.2.2 prefix-list as54858-in in
neighbor 192.0.2.2 route-map as54858-in in
neighbor 192.0.2.2 route-map full-tables-out out
neighbor 192.0.2.2 maximum-prefix 20
ip prefix-list as54858-in seq 5 permit 64.187.160.0/20
ip prefix-list as54858-in seq 10 permit 198.244.96.0/20
route-map as54858-in permit 500
match ip address prefix-list as54858-in
set local-preference 110
set community 11404:993 11404:3000 11404:3010
route-map full-tables-out permit 1000
match community full-tables-out
ip community-list standard full-tables-out permit 11404:993
ip community-list standard full-tables-out permit 11404:992
ip community-list standard full-tables-out permit 11404:991
ip community-list standard full-tables-out permit 11404:1000
ip community-list standard full-tables-out permit 11404:2000
Always place a max prefix limit
on customers and peers (protection
from route leaks)
Inbound prefix list applied twice
(not required, but nice to protect from typos)
An as-path filter could be
applied here too
Outbound route filtering
(internal routes not sent to customers)
11
Filtering in action (towards a transit)
Cisco example, showing basic portions of the BGP filtering configuration
neighbor 207.8.14.109 remote-as 2828
neighbor 207.8.14.109 description XO Transit
neighbor 207.8.14.109 route-map as2828-in in
neighbor 207.8.14.109 route-map as2828-out out
route-map as2828-in permit 100
set metric 0
set local-preference 50
set community 11404:1000 11404:1070 11404:1270 additive
route-map as2828-out permit 1000
match community as2828-out
set metric-type internal
ip community-list standard as2828-out permit 11404:993
ip community-list standard as2828-out permit 11404:9937
There is more configuration
than this, this is just the
community specific part
Ignore meds, force network
to use nearest exit
Lower local-pref than
default (we pay for this route)
Send MEDs based on IGP
cost (make the carrier haul to nearest
ingress point)
Outbound route filtering
(match only routes tagged to announce to
transit, validity of routes with this tag was
assured at ingress)
12
Real world examples of communities
and local pref (AS11404)
Loopback address of ingress router
cr1-pdx>show ip bgp 64.187.160.0/20
BGP routing table entry for 64.187.160.0/20, version 221286214
Paths: (2 available, best #1, table Default-IP-Routing-Table)
Multipath: eBGP iBGP
Advertised to update-groups:
1
2
3
5
6
7
54858
208.76.153.113 (metric 517) from 208.76.153.76 (208.76.153.76)
Origin IGP, metric 0, localpref 110, valid, internal, best
Community: 11404:993 11404:3000 11404:3010
Originator: 208.76.153.113, Cluster list: 208.76.153.76
IGP (OSPF) metric (towards 208.76.153.113)
Loopback address of route refelctor
Higher than default localpref (110)
Tagged as customer route (11404:3000) from Seattle (11404:3010)
Tagged to announce to transit (11404:993)
13
Q&A
14
More info?
Check the relevant NANOG presentations:
Philip Smith NANOG 50:
http://www.nanog.org/meetings/nanog50/presentations/Sunday/NANOG50.Talk33.NANOG50-BGP-Techniques.pdf
Jason Schiller at NANOG 53:
http://www.nanog.org/meetings/nanog53/presentations/Sunday/bgp-101-NANOG53.pdf
Feel free to contact me:
John@vanoppen.com
206-973-8302
