Normally on a peering exchange, all connected parties will establish bilateral peering relationships with each other member port connected to the exchange. As the number of connected parties increases, it becomes increasingly more difficult to manage peering relationships with members of the exchange.
By using a route server for all peering relationships, the number of BGP sessions per router stays at two: one for each route server. Clearly this is a more sustainable way of maintaining IXP peering relationships with a large number of participants.
Should I use the route servers?
If you do not have any good reason not to use the route serveres, you should probably use them.
The route servers are aimed at small to medium sized members of FSIX who do not have the time or resources to manage all their peering relationships. This is also valid for larger members who have an open policy but may not be worth their while managing peering relationships with all the smaller members of the exchange.
The route servers are operated on two physical servers, located in different parts of our datacenter to ensure a reliable and stable service.
We have implemented inbound prefix filtering based on IRRDB records and use RPKI on all sessions. If your prefix has a valid RPKI ROA, it will pass.
FSIX uses BIRD and we run Ubuntu 20.04 LTS on the servers.
Using the route servers
If route server has been enabled, the route servers will accept BGP connections from your server. You will need to configure your sesssions according to the table below.
| Peering LAN | Route server ASN | Route Server #1 | Route Server #2 | ||
| IPv4 address | IPv6 address | IPv4 address | IPv6 address | ||
| FSIX LAN #1 | 57775 | 185.1.174.254 | 2001:7f8:f7:0:185:1:174:254 | 185.1.174.253 | 2001:7f8:f7:0:185:1:174:253 |
Community based prefix filtering
We provide well known communities to allow members to control the distribution of their prefixes. These are as follows:
| Description | Community |
| Prevent announcement of a prefix to a peer | 0:peer-as |
| Announce a route to a certain peer | 57775:peer-as |
| Prevent announcements of a prefix to all peers | 0:57775 |
| Announce a route to all peers | 57775:57775 |
FSIX also supports large community prefix distribution control using the following communities:
| Description | Community |
| Prevent announcement of a prefix to a peer | 57775:0:peer-as |
| Announce a route to a certain peer | 57775:1:peer-as |
| Prevent announcements of a prefix to all peers | 57775:0:0 |
| Announce a route to all peers | 57775:1:0 |
We also support BGP large community AS-path prepending control using the following communities:
| Description | Community |
| Prepend to peer AS once | 57775:101:peer-as |
| Prepend to peer AS twice | 57775:102:peer-as |
| Prepend to peer AS three times | 57775:103:peer-as |
If your router supports large communities you should use those over standard 16-bit communities as many members now have 32-bit ASN. Do not mix standard 16-bit communities and large communities. Choose one or the other.