[ixpmanager] arouteserver vs IXP Manager

[André Grüneberg]

Hi Richard,

First of all: It good to see that you want to automate route server config
generation and introduce filtering -- this helps the Internet at large.

Most of the features you are mentioning in your comparison have little to
do with IXP Manager vs. ARouteServer. Both tools eventually use templates
to generate the configuration from the data provided to the tool. Instead
of using the IX-F export from IXP Manager (which does not include the MD5
passwords stored in IXP Manager) to feed ARouteServer, you could even
implement templates to generate ARouteServer configuration from IXP Manager.

We once thought about that path, but eventually ended up using the bird2
templates available in IXP Manager natively. Yet we adapted the templates
to support some more features, like graceful shutdown and  Add-Path Tx.
You might rather look at it from another angle: Regarding BIRD, IXP Manager
is generating a multi-table configuration whereas ARouteServer uses a
single-table approach. [Both are perfectly valid!]

Regarding Looking Glass, you may as well have a look into Alice LG. I
agree, the IXP Manager internal implementation is practical, but I am a bit
opinionated towards Alice LG.

HTH&HAND,
André

On Thu, 27 Apr 2023 at 04:24, Richard Laager via ixpmanager <
ixpmanager at inex.ie> wrote:

> MICE (in Minneapolis, MN USA) is using IXP Manager. We are looking to
> replace our hand-configured route servers with automated ones, using IXP
> Manager as the source of truth about participants.
>
> Notably, we are NOT doing IRR/RPKI filtering today. A big goal of the
> project is to start doing that. A particular pain point will be people
> whose routes will start being filtered.
>
> We are intending on using BIRD 2.x on Ubuntu 22.04.
>
> I am comparing arouteserver (which can accept a EuroIX export from IXP
> Manager) and IXP Manager's direct configuration (which I found out about
> from Barry O'Donovan's excellent videos on YouTube).
>
> What are the advantages of using IXP Manager directly?
>
> arouteserver features are listed here:
> https://arouteserver.readthedocs.io/en/latest/#features
>
> At this point, I'm thinking the trade-offs are:
>
> arouteserver:
>    - Unclear whether IXP Manager treats a valid ROA as an IRR pass.
>      I'm told this helps with stub networks who are missing IRR:
>
>
> https://arouteserver.readthedocs.io/en/latest/CONFIG.html#use-rpki-roas-as-if-they-were-route-objects
>    - Supports PeeringDB "never via route server", which IXP
>      Manager seemingly does not:
>      https://github.com/inex/IXP-Manager/issues/798v
>    - Support blackhole (RTBH) community. We wanted to add this
>      at MICE, but it is unclear how much participants will actually
>      care. This does have complexities with integrating with IRR/RPKI
>      filtering. For example, you really want to ignore the max-prefix on
>      the ROA, I'd think.
>    - It supports some features that I'm not sure how much people will
>      care about:
>      - RTT-based tagging/filtering.
>      - ADD-PATH capability (RFC7911)
>      - BGP roles (RFC9234)
>      - BGP graceful shutdown
>
> IXP Manager:
>    - All in one. One less piece to worry about.
>    - Built in looking glass which will show why routes were rejected.
>      This is really important for us, so participants have a way to know
>      what is being filtered and why. I am not not sure how the looking
>      glass functionality would need to be built with arouteserver.
>
> --
> Richard
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-- 
André Grüneberg, Managing Director
andre.grueneberg at bcix.de
+49 30 2332195 42

BCIX Management GmbH
Albrechtstr. 110
12103 Berlin
Germany

Geschäftsführer/Managing Directors: Jens Lietzmann, André Grüneberg
Handelsregister: Amtsgericht Charlottenburg, HRB 143581 B
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