BGP Communities
BGP communities which you can use for traffic engineering.
BGP communities in general provide an in-band mechanism to provide additional information along with routes announced through BGP. This information can be used for administrative but also technical purposes, such as route-filtering, prepending and preferring. For our members various BGP communities have been implemented to provide members with additional functionality over 'plain' BGP. All communities are of the 'large' type, allowing to transport information for/about both 16 and 32 bit ASNs. To make use of BGP communities, make sure you have configured send-community towards our route-servers
Route Servers
ERA-IX operates multiple Route Servers that redistribute routes across our platform. For each metro we have a dedicated Route Server ASN. You must use the proper ASN based on your metro.| Route Server Location | Route Server ASN |
|---|---|
| Amsterdam | 206221 |
| Frankfurt | 213687 |
Informational
The following communities are set by ERA-IX to tag information onto routes.Locations
Location communities tagged by ERA-IX.
| Community | Meaning | Description |
|---|---|---|
[RS]:899:[ID] |
Originated at [ID] |
Location the route was learned from |
| Netherlands | ||
|---|---|---|
| ID | Location | Address |
18 |
NIKHEF Housing | Science Park 105, Amsterdam |
62 |
Equinix AM7 | Kuiperbergweg 13, Amsterdam |
374 |
Iron Mountain AMS-1 | J.W. Lucasweg 35, Amsterdam |
1083 |
NorthC Amsterdam | Kabelweg 48, Amsterdam |
245 |
InterDC Doetinchem | Gildenbroederslaan 1, Doetinchem |
| Germany | ||
| ID | Location | Address |
60 |
Equinix FR5 | Kleyerstrasse 90, Frankfurt |
12570 |
Tornado DC | Robert-Bosch-Str. 25, Langen |
Control
The following communities are supported and can be set by our members.Filtering
The filtering communities can be utilized by members to enforce peering policy. The filtering communities can be set to control where your route is going to be exported to. For example to de-peer a specific ASN present on the route-server.
| Community | Meaning | Description |
|---|---|---|
[RS]:0:[ASN] |
Do not announce to member [ASN] |
Selective de-peer ASN via route-server |
0:[ASN] |
Do not announce to member [ASN] (legacy) |
Selective de-peer ASN via route-server. |
[RS]:0:0 |
Do not announce to any member | De-peer all route-server peers. |
[RS]:1:[ASN] |
Announce to member [ASN] (override [RS]:0:0) |
Override de-peer all ASNs for ASN. |
ERA-IX advocates for open peering and exchanging of routes. However, when
more advanced policy is desired, our communities will help to achieve this. For example: A selective/restrictive peering policy can be enforced on the ERA-IX route-servers
by setting the 206221:0:0 community along with the 206221:1:[ASN] for all
member ASNs which should receive the route. For legacy purposes we also allow selective de-peering through standard communities, these
communities are only able to affect routes exported to 16-bit ASNs.
Prepending
Prepending communities can be used to selectively prepend routes. Allowing members to alter the flow of traffic from remote networks.
| Community | Meaning | Description |
|---|---|---|
[RS]:101:[ASN] |
Prepend once to [ASN] |
Apply selective prepend to specified ASN |
[RS]:102:[ASN] |
Prepend twice to [ASN] |
Apply selective prepend (twice) to specified ASN |
[RS]:103:[ASN] |
Prepend thrice to [ASN] |
Apply selective prepend (thrice) to specified ASN |
These communities only affect routes exported by the ERA-IX route-servers, direct bilateral peering sessions will be unaffected by setting the prepending communities.