Informational BGP Communities

Route Origin

The route server will mark all routes with certain BGP Communities to indicate their origin. You can use this information to determine where a certain route has been injected into the SwissIX switching platform. This gives you the option to filter routes learned from the route servers based on geographical location.

Currently we tag the following information:

  • Switch: Indicates at which switch a prefix has been injected into the SwissIX platform. We tag the corresponding edge switch.
    • Example: edge01.zrh1
  • Metro: The metropolitan region corresponding to the switch
    • Example: Zurich
  • Country: The country corresponding to the above (in M49 format)
    • Example: Switzerland
  • Continent: The continent corresponding to the above (in M49 format)
    • Example: Europe

This means that every route you will learn from the route servers will have four (additional) BGP Communities attached which will indicate location information.

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:

  • 42476:1911:*
  • 42476:1912:*
  • 42476:1913:*
  • 42476:1914:*

Resources

Overview

ContinentContinent BGP CommunityCountryCountry BGP CommunityMetroMetro BGP CommunitySwitchSwitch BGP Community



Europe


42476:1914:150


Switzerland


42476:1913:756


ZRH (Zurich)


42476:1912:28		edge01.
zrh1		42476:1911:150
edge01.
zrh2		42476:1911:151
edge01.
zrh3		42476:1911:152
edge01.
zrh4		42476:1911:153
edge01.
zrh5		42476:1911:154
edge01.
zrh6		42476:1911:155
edge01.
zrh7		42476:1911:156
Unknown Continent42476:1914:65535Unknown Country42476:1913:65535Unknown Metro42476:1912:65535Unknown Switch42476:1911:65535

Example

A prefix has the following BGP Communities attached to it:

  • 42476:1914:150
  • 42476:1913:756
  • 42476:1912:28
  • 42476:1911:150

From these BGP Communities you can deduce that this particular prefix has been injected in Europe (42476:1914:150), Switzerland (42476:1913:756) in metro region Zurich (42476:1912:28) at edge01.zrh1 (42476:1911:150).