Route  Servers,  Mergers,  Features,  and  More.   Integration of IXP’s. Route Server challenges Chris Malayter [email protected] What  drives  a  RS  integra6on?   •  Two  IX’s  merging  into  a  single  VLAN  for  mutual  benefit   •  A  city  with  many  IX’s  merging  into  a  larger  community  based  org.   •  Two  corpora@ons  merging  exis@ng  fabrics   EQUINIX CONFIDENTIAL – *Presentation Title* 2 Choices  Choices   •  What platforms are being used? – Bird – OpenBGPD – Quagga – LINX Quagga •  What OS’s are being used? – Linux – FreeBSD – OpenBSD •  Auto provisioning? – Almost a must for any IX of scale in this day and age. EQUINIX CONFIDENTIAL – *Presentation Title* 3 More  Choices   •  Features – Community Support •  Local Pref •  Blackhole – AS4 – V6 – Filtering •  AS-SET •  Manual Update •  AS-SET with the ability to update •  None? – Multi-RIB EQUINIX CONFIDENTIAL – *Presentation Title* 4 You’ve  merged  what  next?   •  Comprehensive analysis of features needed – Arguably the most important step in the process – IX membership will likely drive this part for you – What are your coders capable of coding for you in your time interval •  Comprehensive analysis of route server software – A route server is not a route server is not a route server – A 15 member IXP may be just fine with quagga, AMS-IX/LINX/DECIX/Equinix will not be – Diving into the messaging bus, threads, and queuing mechanisms of the RS software will help to give you an idea of scalability •  Analysis of what OS’s are going to support your RS software – What can your ISS team support – Security considerations? – Requirements of the Route Server Software EQUINIX CONFIDENTIAL – *Presentation Title* 5 Issues   •  MD5 – Do you want to support MD5? Opens a host of issues with MD5 key tracking, security, kernel versions, etc. •  BGP TTL Security •  Communities – Allow flexibility for your members – Can seriously complicate your config in a multi-rib environment •  Multiple RIB’s – Allows an amazing amount of flexibility – Greatly complicates the config – Greatly complicates auto-provisioning – RIB per peer? Not all need it, but if you can and you have the RAM you may want to. •  IRR Filtering – V4’s irr is completely unmaintained for a large AS-SETs. Leads to possible route leaks. Also amazingly large configs. (RAM, CPU, Startup Time) – V6 is annoying, not well populated, and can be annoying to aggregate. – Do you need to filter? Customers should be doing it….  EQUINIX CONFIDENTIAL – *Presentation Title* 6 OS  Issues   •  OpenBGPD – OpenBSD – OpenBGPD really doesn’t work well on any platform but OpenBSD. There are ports, but a significant number of features will not work. •  MD5 issues – Legacy Linux kernels have many md5 bugs. Take your time and find a kernel version that works with your route server…it will save you many headaches down the line – Tracking Customer MD5’s is a security issue in itself. The place you store the data should be highly secure to protect the “integrity” of the session. EQUINIX CONFIDENTIAL – *Presentation Title* 7 General  Trends   •  OpenBGPd or BIRD seem to be be preferred – Scalability, stability, and feature development tends to sway peoples choices •  BIRD is under constant development with a very active development group •  OpenBGPD is very stable but has less nobs and more bugs  •  OpenBSD, Linux and FreeBSD tend to be the OS’s of choice – OpenBSD for OpenBGPD – Linux/FreeBSD for BIRD – More of a what a given IX is most experienced in •  Features are all over the board depending on the region EQUINIX CONFIDENTIAL – *Presentation Title* 8 Membership  Demands   •  Customers  and  Members  demand  quite  a  bit   •  Most  IX’s  have  route  servers  because  of  strong  member  demand   •  Lacking  route  servers  is  a  compe@@ve  disadvantage   •  The  more  automated  (portal)  you  make  your  route  servers,  the  happier  customers  tend  to  be   •  Features  are  heavily  customer  demand  driven   EQUINIX CONFIDENTIAL – *Presentation Title* 9 Best  Prac6ces   •  AS-­‐SET  filtering   •  Prefix  Filtering  –  North  America   •  Some  community  manipula@on   •  Auto-­‐provisioning   •  Mul@ple  Ribs   EQUINIX CONFIDENTIAL – *Presentation Title* 10