FW: use Bird as Route Server for Balcan-IX
Hello My name is George Nicolae and I work for Orange Romania Communications ( former Telekom Romania Communications). We operate an Internet Exchange : Balcan-IX , that is mainly present in Romania but have also point of presence in countries around us, and partner with IX-es from this countries. Now we have around 50 customers and 6500 prefixes exchanged. We now use Quagga for route servers and we analyze what is the best way to upgrade, both as hardware and software. As you developed Bird, that is used by most of the major players in the IX market, we want to ask you for information about usage BIRD as route-server in our IX. Following come in my mind at first hand * What hardware did we need for accommodate 2 Route Servers with Bird , taking into consideration following: o Double the number of prefixes and customers o We use the hardware for Route Servers and if possible for other tools that is related as reporting , looking glass and others if are available. Did you know about integrations of your software with other reporting/configuration tools ? o We have an mixed environment and we need to make customization of the service * Is bird Software free? Do you developed other tools related to usage of this software as Route Server. * What are requirements regarding Operating System and Hypervisor Also we appreciate any info regarding Bird and also comparison with other alternatives for this role. Thank you George Nicolae Orange Romania Communications _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Ce message et ses pieces jointes peuvent contenir des informations confidentielles ou privilegiees et ne doivent donc pas etre diffuses, exploites ou copies sans autorisation. Si vous avez recu ce message par erreur, veuillez le signaler a l'expediteur et le detruire ainsi que les pieces jointes. Les messages electroniques etant susceptibles d'alteration, Orange decline toute responsabilite si ce message a ete altere, deforme ou falsifie. Merci. This message and its attachments may contain confidential or privileged information that may be protected by law; they should not be distributed, used or copied without authorisation. If you have received this email in error, please notify the sender and delete this message and its attachments. As emails may be altered, Orange is not liable for messages that have been modified, changed or falsified. Thank you.
Trying to answer one of your questions: Yes, BIRD is opensource. I'm biased, but in my humble opinion, BIRD is the most versatile BGP daemon out there for Route-Server IXP and Route-Reflector IP scenarios. Regarding your other statements and questions for your IXP scenario, I will try to address them with some suggestions: - Use some Route-Server configuration template feature. - I personally really like what has been done in the project https://github.com/pierky/arouteserver. - But the https://ixpmanager.org/ configuration generator project is also reasonable. - If possible, don't use just BIRD (or just quagga, or just FRR, or just openbgpd) as the Route-Server daemon, so your resources won't be affected if a problem arises that affects that daemon. Note: This is one of the ideas behind "arouteserver". Em seg., 18 de jul. de 2022 às 07:54, <george.nicolae@orange.com> escreveu:
Hello
My name is George Nicolae and I work for Orange Romania Communications ( former Telekom Romania Communications). We operate an Internet Exchange : Balcan-IX , that is mainly present in Romania but have also point of presence in countries around us, and partner with IX-es from this countries.
Now we have around 50 customers and 6500 prefixes exchanged.
We now use Quagga for route servers and we analyze what is the best way to upgrade, both as hardware and software.
As you developed Bird, that is used by most of the major players in the IX market, we want to ask you for information about usage BIRD as route-server in our IX. Following come in my mind at first hand
· What hardware did we need for accommodate 2 Route Servers with Bird , taking into consideration following:
o Double the number of prefixes and customers
o We use the hardware for Route Servers and if possible for other tools that is related as reporting , looking glass and others if are available. Did you know about integrations of your software with other reporting/configuration tools ?
o We have an mixed environment and we need to make customization of the service
· Is bird Software free? Do you developed other tools related to usage of this software as Route Server.
· What are requirements regarding Operating System and Hypervisor
Also we appreciate any info regarding Bird and also comparison with other alternatives for this role.
Thank you
George Nicolae
Orange Romania Communications
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Ce message et ses pieces jointes peuvent contenir des informations confidentielles ou privilegiees et ne doivent donc pas etre diffuses, exploites ou copies sans autorisation. Si vous avez recu ce message par erreur, veuillez le signaler a l'expediteur et le detruire ainsi que les pieces jointes. Les messages electroniques etant susceptibles d'alteration, Orange decline toute responsabilite si ce message a ete altere, deforme ou falsifie. Merci.
This message and its attachments may contain confidential or privileged information that may be protected by law; they should not be distributed, used or copied without authorisation. If you have received this email in error, please notify the sender and delete this message and its attachments. As emails may be altered, Orange is not liable for messages that have been modified, changed or falsified. Thank you.
-- Douglas Fernando Fischer Engº de Controle e Automação
On 18/07/2022 12.50, george.nicolae@orange.com wrote:
As you developed Bird, that is used by most of the major players in the IX market, we want to ask you for information about usage BIRD as route-server in our IX. Following come in my mind at first hand
·What hardware did we need for accommodate 2 Route Servers with Bird , taking into consideration following:
oDouble the number of prefixes and customers
TLDR; No prob. DE-CIX runs Bird 1.6.8 at the Frankfurt IX location with ~1K connected BGP peers. The typical setup is one BIRD instance per Route Server IP(v6+v4). Bird 1.6.x is two daemons, one for v6 and one for v4. Bird >= 2.0.0 is one daemon for both v6 and v4. IX.br does the same, ~1K connected BGP peers, albeit their RS setup with BIRD is slightly different. "Multi-bird" I found it called in this presentation. http://slides.lacnic.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/multi-bird-lacnic.pdf Multiple BIRD instances running a full-mesh topology between all instances. And load-sharing BGP connections from IX connected networks between all the BIRD instances. Benefits from core count. As each instance is it's own process. E.g. could have a config in place so that each BIRD instance does not run on the same core. Preventing competition for clock cycles on the same CPU core.
oWe use the hardware for Route Servers and if possible for other tools that is related as reporting , looking glass and others if are available. Did you know about integrations of your software with other reporting/configuration tools ?
Alice LG as the looking glass, is an option. https://github.com/alice-lg/alice-lg
oWe have an mixed environment and we need to make customization of the service
·Is bird Software free? Do you developed other tools related to usage of this software as Route Server.
TLDR; Yes https://www.bizety.com/2018/09/04/bgp-open-source-tools-quagga-vs-bird-vs-ex... "CZ.NIC provides a support programme for BIRD, with prices ranging from 5,000 to 50,000 Euro per year. Current customers are primarily IXPs and large CDN/cloud providers. These fees cover all development costs." It's free to use the software. There do exist a support program to support the continued development of the project. https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/collection/open-source-observatory-osor/document...
·What are requirements regarding Operating System and Hypervisor
TLDR; Linux based OS (my choice) and Full Kernel Virtualization (e.g. KVM/QEMU based VM) Standard virtualization will do. With adequate HW resources allocated to the VM. Your main concern will of course be Memory and CPU resources as the number of peers and prefixes growing over time (this is a long-term consideration). Note, if selecting BIRD, it is a single-threaded daemon, and clock speed versus core count should be considered, when selecting what HW and operational model (the single BIRD per RS or similar to IX.br's multi-bird setup).
Also we appreciate any info regarding Bird and also comparison with other alternatives for this role.
Hello!
The typical setup is one BIRD instance per Route Server IP(v6+v4). Bird 1.6.x is two daemons, one for v6 and one for v4. Bird >= 2.0.0 is one daemon for both v6 and v4.
and I'd suggest using BIRD 2 for now as versions 1.6.x are considered legacy; they are not getting any more updates, just security I'd also suggest at least trying if BIRD 3 could work for you, provided you don't need the buggy features, most notably MRT dumping and also checking ROA while displaying routes to CLI.
"CZ.NIC provides a support programme for BIRD, with prices ranging from 5,000 to 50,000 Euro per year. Current customers are primarily IXPs and large CDN/cloud providers. These fees cover all development costs."
It's free to use the software. There do exist a support program to support the continued development of the project.
… if you'd like to get some paid support and also support the development, the bird-support@network.cz e-mail address is the right place to go.
Standard virtualization will do. With adequate HW resources allocated to the VM. Your main concern will of course be Memory and CPU resources as the number of peers and prefixes growing over time (this is a long-term consideration). Note, if selecting BIRD, it is a single-threaded daemon, and clock speed versus core count should be considered, when selecting what HW and operational model (the single BIRD per RS or similar to IX.br's multi-bird setup).
I'd suggest not prefering clock speed any more as BIRD 3 is getting its next version really soon. If your load is so high for you to consider clock speed, you should probably migrate to BIRD 3 as soon as it gets stable for you, thus needing the high core count anyway. Maria
Hi there, Use IXP manager is very suitable for small IXPs and easy to configure. It may be useful for you. On Mon, Jul 18, 2022, 7:06 PM <george.nicolae@orange.com> wrote:
Hello
My name is George Nicolae and I work for Orange Romania Communications ( former Telekom Romania Communications). We operate an Internet Exchange : Balcan-IX , that is mainly present in Romania but have also point of presence in countries around us, and partner with IX-es from this countries.
Now we have around 50 customers and 6500 prefixes exchanged.
We now use Quagga for route servers and we analyze what is the best way to upgrade, both as hardware and software.
As you developed Bird, that is used by most of the major players in the IX market, we want to ask you for information about usage BIRD as route-server in our IX. Following come in my mind at first hand
· What hardware did we need for accommodate 2 Route Servers with Bird , taking into consideration following:
o Double the number of prefixes and customers
o We use the hardware for Route Servers and if possible for other tools that is related as reporting , looking glass and others if are available. Did you know about integrations of your software with other reporting/configuration tools ?
o We have an mixed environment and we need to make customization of the service
· Is bird Software free? Do you developed other tools related to usage of this software as Route Server.
· What are requirements regarding Operating System and Hypervisor
Also we appreciate any info regarding Bird and also comparison with other alternatives for this role.
Thank you
George Nicolae
Orange Romania Communications
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Ce message et ses pieces jointes peuvent contenir des informations confidentielles ou privilegiees et ne doivent donc pas etre diffuses, exploites ou copies sans autorisation. Si vous avez recu ce message par erreur, veuillez le signaler a l'expediteur et le detruire ainsi que les pieces jointes. Les messages electroniques etant susceptibles d'alteration, Orange decline toute responsabilite si ce message a ete altere, deforme ou falsifie. Merci.
This message and its attachments may contain confidential or privileged information that may be protected by law; they should not be distributed, used or copied without authorisation. If you have received this email in error, please notify the sender and delete this message and its attachments. As emails may be altered, Orange is not liable for messages that have been modified, changed or falsified. Thank you.
participants (5)
-
Brandon Zhi -
ch＠kviknet.dk -
Douglas Fischer -
george.nicolae＠orange.com -
Maria Matejka