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Anyone run their own Linux/BSD/Unix BGP? I heard bird is pretty good: https://bird.network.cz/ https://bird.network.cz/ What about non-free?

svennek 7y ago
I have been running 2 bird boxes (1.6 series, a version 2 upgrade is scheduled later this year) each with two peers of full feed for both ipv4 (~750k and ~755k routes respectively) and ipv6 (~67k and ~69k routes) and one of them is connected to a local ixp (~94k ipv4 and ~15k ipv6 routes). No problems what soever in the almost two years, they have been running...
- svennek 7y ago
  oh, and note to new users.. don't do an "ip r" on those boxes....
  - linsomniac 7y ago
    I mean, it generates a lot of output, but "ip ro ls" is WAY faster than "route -n" or "netstat -nr" for some reason.
- windexh8er 7y ago
  Do you run them personally and get full tables? If so do you pay for the peering and where?
  - svennek 7y ago
    No, I run it in my (hosting) company. I pay around 250 USD per link per month each, but you also need AS-numbers and IP-addresses, in RIPE (I am in Europe) that is ~2k USD more per year.. edit typo.
  - svennek 7y ago
    forgot to write, that would be massive overkill for a private person...
    - tiernano 7y ago
      maybe overkill, but i do that... got 7 servers in total around the world (2x London, 1x Frankfurt, 2 in Amsterdam, 1 in Ashburn and 1 in Dublin (Home)) and all (except home) have full routes with their upstream providers and a few IXes too. costs around 100 per month, including the ASN and V4/V6 space, and if you include the home internet connection, double that. all routes are brought back to the house for internal testing, so some servers have space using my own IPs. Yes, overkill, but defiantly fun to play with! [update] forgot to mention, all run Linux and Bird. Did look at OpenBGPD, but settled on bird. Also, if interested, https://dn42.net https://dn42.net got me started, and i am https://as204994.net https://as204994.net.
      - ggg3 7y ago
        you peer what to who with that?
        amerine 7y ago
        Everything is on is asn site above. The peers are here https://www.peeringdb.com/net/15369 https://www.peeringdb.com/net/15369
        tiernano 7y ago
        details of my direct upstream peers would be here: https://bgp.he.net/AS204994 https://bgp.he.net/AS204994. Some of my peers (CLoudflare, he.net) are peering directly over IXes (KleyRex, for example) and some (Google) would be though the route server...
      - eb0la 7y ago
        Take a look at spamhaus bgp feed. Better than a firewall: just blackhole the traffic coming from known spammers.
      - 7y ago
- svennek 7y ago
  oh year, for sizing.. They run on a pair of supermicro boxes with a 8-core C2758 (atom) with 16G of ram, which is plenty.. They only do routing (and delivers it* inwards via OSPF where firewalls are on other boxes).. Notice we are a low traffic site and are only running 1Gbps on all links currently... (but that should not matter as load is almost unmeassurable) * = a "default route"
CameronNemo 7y ago
> What about non-free? Do you mean Juniper's JunOS (FreeBSD based), Arista's EOS (Fedora based), or Cisco's NX-OS, IOS-XE, and IOS-XR (Wind River Linux based)? Those are all non-free BGP stacks from what I know. Or perhaps you meant something you can load onto a regular old Linux/BSD distribution.
AdamJacobMuller 7y ago
BIRD is a very good and extremely stable piece of software. We run it on the global network I manage, mostly not in the core (hardware routers are required/better at our scale) but we do run BGP on edge devices and use BIRD there, in a number of full-FIB situations as well. I will also say i've run OpenBGPD in the past, albeit in less demanding situations, and it worked well. That said, I don't recall any advantages OpenBGPD offers over something like BIRD and it was considerably less flexible, though that may not be so anymore.
linsomniac 7y ago
For a 10-15 years I ran multi-homed BGP for a Internet CO-OP (Zebra) and for a small hosting company (Quagga). They both worked great, and I never had worries about the number of prefixes we were receiving (full table in both cases), because my Linux-based routers had tons of memory and CPU. My Quagga setup was fantastic! I used linux-ha to do fail over routing, and could do kernel updates and reboots with, as far as I could tell, zero lost packets. I was super happy with those routers!
methou 7y ago
I've been using bird for years without a problem. It's solid and very customizable. The price is, there's a new language to learn.

svennek 7y ago

I have been running 2 bird boxes (1.6 series, a version 2 upgrade is scheduled later this year) each with two peers of full feed for both ipv4 (~750k and ~755k routes respectively) and ipv6 (~67k and ~69k routes) and one of them is connected to a local ixp (~94k ipv4 and ~15k ipv6 routes). No problems what soever in the almost two years, they have been running...

svennek 7y ago
oh, and note to new users.. don't do an "ip r" on those boxes....
- linsomniac 7y ago
  I mean, it generates a lot of output, but "ip ro ls" is WAY faster than "route -n" or "netstat -nr" for some reason.
windexh8er 7y ago
Do you run them personally and get full tables? If so do you pay for the peering and where?
- svennek 7y ago
  No, I run it in my (hosting) company. I pay around 250 USD per link per month each, but you also need AS-numbers and IP-addresses, in RIPE (I am in Europe) that is ~2k USD more per year.. edit typo.
- svennek 7y ago
  forgot to write, that would be massive overkill for a private person...
  - tiernano 7y ago
    maybe overkill, but i do that... got 7 servers in total around the world (2x London, 1x Frankfurt, 2 in Amsterdam, 1 in Ashburn and 1 in Dublin (Home)) and all (except home) have full routes with their upstream providers and a few IXes too. costs around 100 per month, including the ASN and V4/V6 space, and if you include the home internet connection, double that. all routes are brought back to the house for internal testing, so some servers have space using my own IPs. Yes, overkill, but defiantly fun to play with! [update] forgot to mention, all run Linux and Bird. Did look at OpenBGPD, but settled on bird. Also, if interested, https://dn42.net https://dn42.net got me started, and i am https://as204994.net https://as204994.net.
    - ggg3 7y ago
      you peer what to who with that?
      - amerine 7y ago
        Everything is on is asn site above. The peers are here https://www.peeringdb.com/net/15369 https://www.peeringdb.com/net/15369
      - tiernano 7y ago
        details of my direct upstream peers would be here: https://bgp.he.net/AS204994 https://bgp.he.net/AS204994. Some of my peers (CLoudflare, he.net) are peering directly over IXes (KleyRex, for example) and some (Google) would be though the route server...
    - eb0la 7y ago
      Take a look at spamhaus bgp feed. Better than a firewall: just blackhole the traffic coming from known spammers.
    - 7y ago
svennek 7y ago
oh year, for sizing.. They run on a pair of supermicro boxes with a 8-core C2758 (atom) with 16G of ram, which is plenty.. They only do routing (and delivers it* inwards via OSPF where firewalls are on other boxes).. Notice we are a low traffic site and are only running 1Gbps on all links currently... (but that should not matter as load is almost unmeassurable) * = a "default route"

CameronNemo 7y ago

> What about non-free? Do you mean Juniper's JunOS (FreeBSD based), Arista's EOS (Fedora based), or Cisco's NX-OS, IOS-XE, and IOS-XR (Wind River Linux based)? Those are all non-free BGP stacks from what I know. Or perhaps you meant something you can load onto a regular old Linux/BSD distribution.

AdamJacobMuller 7y ago

BIRD is a very good and extremely stable piece of software. We run it on the global network I manage, mostly not in the core (hardware routers are required/better at our scale) but we do run BGP on edge devices and use BIRD there, in a number of full-FIB situations as well. I will also say i've run OpenBGPD in the past, albeit in less demanding situations, and it worked well. That said, I don't recall any advantages OpenBGPD offers over something like BIRD and it was considerably less flexible, though that may not be so anymore.

linsomniac 7y ago

For a 10-15 years I ran multi-homed BGP for a Internet CO-OP (Zebra) and for a small hosting company (Quagga). They both worked great, and I never had worries about the number of prefixes we were receiving (full table in both cases), because my Linux-based routers had tons of memory and CPU. My Quagga setup was fantastic! I used linux-ha to do fail over routing, and could do kernel updates and reboots with, as far as I could tell, zero lost packets. I was super happy with those routers!

methou 7y ago

I've been using bird for years without a problem. It's solid and very customizable. The price is, there's a new language to learn.