PIE Karachi GlobePEER Route Server Informational BGP Communities

We use BGP Communities to tag some additional information on redistributed routes.These kind of BGP Communities will be referred to as Informational BGP Communities.

Route Origin

The route servers will tag all routes to indicate their origin. You can use this information to determine where a certain route has been injected into the {{IXP_SHORT}} switching platform. This gives you the option to filter routes learned from the route servers based on geographical location.

Every route you receive from the route servers will have four (additional) BGP Communities attached which indicate location information:

  • Switch: e.g. {{SWITCH_CODE}} for {{SWITCH}} (see table below for more information)
  • Metro: e.g. {{METRO_CODE}} for {{CITY}} (see table below for more information)
  • Country: e.g. {{COUNTRY_CODE}} for {{COUNTRY}} (UN M49 format)
  • Continent: e.g. {{CONTINENT_CODE}} for {{CONTINENT}} (UN M49 format)
To avoid ambiguity about the semantics of a certain BGP Community, especially when being present multiple times, we strip all BGP Communities from the range that we use for route origin tagging on import. This is:
{{RS_ASN}}:1911:*
{{RS_ASN}}:1912:*
{{RS_ASN}}:1913:*
{{RS_ASN}}:1914:*

Route Origin Overview

If the exact location of a customer cannot be determined from the {{IXP_SHORT}} database, or in certain special cases, we mark these routes with {{RS_ASN}}:191{1-4}:65535, meaning "unknown".
Example

A route has the following BGP Communities attached:

  • {{RS_ASN}}:1914:{{EXAMPLE_CONTINENT_CODE}}
  • {{RS_ASN}}:1913:{{EXAMPLE_COUNTRY_CODE}}
  • {{RS_ASN}}:1912:{{EXAMPLE_METRO_CODE}}
  • {{RS_ASN}}:1911:{{EXAMPLE_SWITCH_CODE}}

From these BGP Communities you can deduce that a given route learned from the {{IXP_SHORT}} route servers (AS{{RS_ASN}}) has been injected into the {{IXP_SHORT}} platform from {{EXAMPLE_CONTINENT}} ({{RS_ASN}}:1914:{{EXAMPLE_CONTINENT_CODE}}), {{EXAMPLE_COUNTRY}} ({{RS_ASN}}:1913:{{EXAMPLE_COUNTRY_CODE}}) in metro region {{EXAMPLE_CITY}} ({{RS_ASN}}:1912:{{EXAMPLE_METRO_CODE}}) at {{EXAMPLE_SWITCH}} ({{RS_ASN}}:1911:{{EXAMPLE_SWITCH_CODE}}).

How did we do?

IRAQ-IXP Route Server Informational BGP Communities

Ruhr-CIX GlobePEER Route Server Informational BGP Communities

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