Please let me know if bird-users is not the appropriate place for this post; admittedly it is more of a "best practices" question... I am in the process of trying to develop a plan for deploying BGP in a high-availability configuration, using a pair of FreeBSD hosts running BIRD. A number of questions have come up, leaving me unsure how to proceed. The fact that this is my first experience with BGP doesn't help matters. The following diagram outlines how I envision the [physical] configuration. +----------+ +------+ router-a +-------+ xxxxxxxx +----------+ | xx xx +--+-----+ +------------+ xx LAN x + switch +-------| ISP router | x xx +--+-----+ +------------+ xx xxxxx +----------+ | xxxxx +------+ router-b +-------+ +----------+ I dumped this in a pastebin, in case my mail client mauls it..http://pastebin.com/rDTDMA7j In this scenario, router-a and router-b are running FreeBSD, with CARP to provide a virtual IP for failover. The two routers act in a failover manner, with router-b taking over the virtual IP upon failure of router-a. The goal is to maintain the fast failover (seconds) that I get from CARP in non-BGP configurations. I am wondering if the following method is a common/feasible/best solution. Under normal conditions. * BOTH router-a and router-b establish BGP sessions to the ISP. This way, each router has a copy of the BGP routing table in memory, ready to go. * router-a advertises my prefixes to the ISP router. * all regular traffic is handled by router-a. If router-a fails. * Programmatically update the router-b BIRD config to begin advertising prefixes. * router-b already has the BGP table in memory, so routing can resume immediately. Is there a better way to achieve this? Will my ISP laugh at me when I ask them to assign me a /29, and allow me to run two BGP sessions? Thank you! TJ -- This e-mail and any files transmitted with it are confidential and are intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you are not the intended recipient or the individual responsible for delivering the e-mail to the intended recipient, please be advised that you have received this e-mail in error and that any use, dissemination, forwarding, printing, or copying of this e-mail is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please return it to the sender immediately and delete the original message and any copy of it from your computer system. If you have any questions concerning this message, please contact the sender or call ClaimLynx at (952) 593-5969.