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Low cost BGP routers for testing/learning?
Looking for recommendations on low end BGP routers. This is for anycast testing/learning purposes only, so have minimal throughput requirements. Non-profit project in multiple (20+) locations, hence looking to keep unit costs down. This said, the routers should have full BGP functionality and support multihoming.
Comments
Mikrotik, DD-WRT does BGP as well, as does OpenWRT. Mikrotik devices can be had for around 50EUR, single port cheap DD/OpenWRT devices for 25EUR.
EdgeRouter lite?
Just any linux box with enough RAM and quagga.
what's "enough" RAM in this case?
what Linux distribution is recommended?
Most of our customer are running Debian with Quagga with at least 512MB.
EdgeRouter / Mikrotik is the way to go.
depends from use case, with default route only 256MB RAM is enough, with full table I would suggest at least 1GB
Debian/Ubuntu, we use Ubuntu 12.04/14.04 LTS
MikroTik or Quagga
vyos, community fork of vyatta.
we are using vyatta for our initial bgp setup in few years ago, their documentation is much easy to understand, you can try it.
You can run that (debian, ubuntu, vyos, ...) on an APU (4GB RAM, Dualcore, SSD): http://pcengines.ch/apu.htm
A KVM VM running a recent Linux kernel + BIRD/Quagga (for Juniper/Cisco ish syntaxes, respectively).
Nice one. Only 512MB RAM though, so can it handle a full BGP table?
No. 512mb is too low on an EdgeRouter.
1GB for full BGP tables. 2GB would be better, but 1GB can work too. But use 32bit platform with 1GB RAM, since it uses less RAM.
So which syntax is preferable from a practical viewpoint? Most people here recommend Quagga - hence Cisco syntax? Or are there other considerations that favor Quagga vis a vis BIRD?
Doesn't matter which syntax. If you understand BGP you can configure it on any platform.
VyOS
Using Quagga, will it be possible to announce own ASN/IP block? Will this require any additional announcement/support from the upstream provider/DC?
The upstream must agree to have BGP session with you and then there might be filtering in place so some work would be needed to get your prefix propagated and accepted to the rest of the world. Quagga is the only thing needed at your end, you don't need anything else.
Quagga on a Linux box.
Obviously I read @rds100's shorthand as he intended.
Quagga can be compiled and run on freebsd, netbsd and god knows what else. Though for most people Linux would be easier
+1 for Ubiquiti stuff ===> https://www.ubnt.com/broadband/#edgemax:hardware
Yes, you will need a BGP session with your upstream.
Generally speaking, it's more sane to use a "polished" soft-router like VyOS, if that is an option in your scenario.
I'm willing to entertain any options, hence this thread:
VyOS uses Quagga in the background to begin with.
Use whatever you want, really. Once you know how it works, you should be able to config it everywhere else.
By polished, I mean it's a complete router with a coherent interface. I mention VyOS, because if you're going to do BGP, you may as well use a fully-capable router, be it soft in this case.