AMS-IX Route Servers

AMS-IX offers its members connected to the Peering LAN the opportunity to peer via its route servers.

Introduction

Normally, you need to maintain separate BGP sessions to each of your peers' routers. With a route server you can replace all or a subset of these sessions with one session towards the route server.

The goal of the route server project is to facilitate the implementation of peering arrangements, and to lower the barrier of entry for new participants on the peering platform.

The route servers do not partake in the forwarding path. Also, peering with a route server does not mean that you must accept routes from all other route server participants.

For a good overview of the route server model please see the Quagga manual.

Deployment

Members who peer with the route servers can opt to send their prefixes to specific other peers of the route server, or to all of them. This is done via attaching specific communities to each prefix announced to the route servers.

The route server does not insert its own ASN into the AS_path; therefore, prefixes advertised to the route server are likely to have shorter AS_paths than those received over transit connections.

The route servers support both IPv4 and IPv6.

Progress

In the future we will move away from a community-based policy framework towards a web-based or IRRdb-based one. This will allow two-way filtering of announcements, versus having to filter announcements from the route servers to your router on your end.

Presently, some 48 unique ASNs participate in the route server trial, representing over 2400 prefixes. For more information about who is participating, see the Connected Parties page.