BGP Beacon Info @psg.com

• What is a BGP Beacon?
• Existing BGP Beacons
• Do you want to set up a BGP Beacon?
• Preliminary Analysis from Beacon monitoring
• Public BGP Monitor Data Archives
• References
• Related Sites
• Contacts

BGP Beacons are for research purposes to improve our understanding of BGP dynamics. A BGP Beacon is an unused prefix which has a well-defined schedule for announcement and withdrawal. Given the known schedule of announcements and withdrawals, we can study the dynamics of BGP using publicly available BGP update data. Beacons may also prove useful to operators attempting to adjust network configuration parameters such as those associated with route flap damping.

• prefix	source AS	Period	First daily announcement	First daily withdrawal	Beacon Host
  198.133.206.0/24	3130	2 hrs.	3:00am GMT	1:00am GMT	Randy Bush
  192.135.183.0/24	5637	2 hrs.	3:00am GMT	1:00am GMT	David Meyer
  203.10.63.0/24	1221	2 hrs.	3:00am GMT	1:00am GMT	Geoff Huston
  198.32.7.0/24	3944	2 hrs.	1:00am GMT	3:00am GMT	Andrew Partan
  192.83.230.0/24	3130	schedule.	1:00am GMT	3:00am GMT	Randy Bush
  198.180.153.0/24	Westin,Linx,Tokyo	schedule	1:00am GMT	3:00am GMT	Randy Bush

• RIPE BGP Beacons

• Obtain the software based on modified bgpd.pl from Sourceforget.net by emailing me. This is simply a BGP simulator that can establish EBGP or IBGP sessions with another BGP speaker. I have made changes to the original software so that it can be configured to inject BGP updates into the BGP session. Please refer to the README file in the software. An alternative of using this software would be logging into the router periodically and insert "network (prefix)" and "no network (prefix)" statement.
• Find an unused prefix that is not aggregated by your upstream provider.
• Configure either an EBGP or an IBGP session using bgpd.pl, which needs to run on a separate box.
  • Recommended: Use a private AS number (or another AS number of you have one), configure bgpd.pl with that AS and establish an EBGP peering session with a router in your network. Again, you can establish an EBGP peering session between bgpd.pl with a zebra/bgpd box which in turn has a peering session with a router in your network.
  • If you choose use IBGP, configure an IBGP session between bgpd.pl with another BGP speaker in your network. bgpd.pl can act as a client with respect to its peer -- a route reflector. Or it can act as another route reflector peering with an existing route reflector. The goal is to have the updates injected by bgpd.pl be propapaged to the rest of the Internet.
    If you don't have access to the routers in your network and you have a zebra/bgpd box that peers with a router in your network. Make sure that the router it peers with will accept announcements sent from the zebra/bgpd box. You need to create an IBGP peering session between bgpd.pl and the zebra/bgpd box.

Come soon... Prelimary analysis: beacon paper

Multihomed beacon analysis: A Measurement Study on the Impact of Routing Events on End-to-End Internet Path Performance

• Route Views raw data from Route Views
• RIPE raw data from RIPE Routing Information Service

• Randy Bush, Tim Griffin and Zhuoqing Morley Mao, "Route flap damping: harmful?" talk slides, RIPE 43, 2002
• Tim Griffin, "What is the sound of one route flapping?" Network Modeling and Simulation Summer Workshop @ Dartmouth, 2002
• C. Labovitz, A. Ahuja, A. Bose and F. Jahanian, "Delayed Internet Routing Convergence", Sigcomm 2000
• Zhuoqing Morley Mao, Ramesh Govindan, George Varghese and Randy Katz, "Route Flap Damping Exacerbates Internet Routing Convergence", SIGCOMM 2002
• Christian Panigl, Joachim Schmitz, Philip Smith and Cristina Vistoli, RIPE-229: "RIPE Routing-WG Recommendations for Coordinated Route-flap Damping Parameters", 2001
• C. Villamizar, R. Chandra and R. Govindan, RFC2439: "BGP Route Flap Damping", 1998

• RIPE Beacons
• Zebra routing software (for BGP monitors)
• MIT's BGP monitor
• Olaf Maennel
• Geoff Huston's analysis
• Tim Griffin's Interdomain Routing page

• Z. Morley Mao (Please send comments or queries about this page to zmao@eecs.umich.edu).
• Tim Griffin