IX.br BGP Configuration: A Practical Walkthrough

Joining IX.br needs three things in place before any BGP configuration: your own AS number, your own IP space, and a port at the exchange. After that it is standard eBGP with the route servers, plus your bilateral sessions.

Get prefix filtering right before you announce anything. A leaked prefix at an exchange is visible to everyone on it, immediately.

Brazil connectivity delivered by a neutral multicarrier operator. We map every route available at your address and come back with price, lead time and SLA.

Joining an internet exchange is mostly paperwork and patience. The BGP part is short, and the mistakes people make are consistent enough to list.

Before you configure anything

An ASN and your own address space, from NIC.br under LACNIC.
A port on the exchange fabric at the location you are joining, and the cross-connect to reach it.
Your routing policy registered in an IRR, because peers and route servers will filter against it.

Route servers, and why you want them

The exchange provides route servers so that you do not have to negotiate and configure a session with every participant individually. You peer with the route servers, and through them you receive the prefixes of everyone else who does the same. One or two sessions replace what would otherwise be hundreds.

The trade is that you have less per-peer control. Most networks start with the route servers, then add direct sessions with the handful of networks where the volume justifies the extra configuration.

The configuration itself, in outline

An interface on the exchange LAN with the addresses the exchange assigns you — IPv4 and IPv6, because there is no reason to do only one.
eBGP sessions to the route servers, and to any direct peers you arrange.
Import filters that accept only what you expect, and export filters that announce only your own prefixes. Announcing your transit-learned routes at an exchange turns you into an accidental transit provider for everyone there.
A maximum-prefix limit on every session.
Local preference set so exchange routes are preferred over paid transit for the destinations they cover, which is the entire financial point.

Mistakes that show up again and again

No export filter. The single most expensive one, and it affects everyone else too.
IRR objects that were never updated. Your prefixes get filtered and you spend a day debugging a session that is working correctly.
Configuring IPv4 and leaving IPv6 for later. Later never arrives, and half the benefit is left on the table.
Assuming the exchange replaces transit. It does not. It covers the networks present at the exchange, and nothing else.

JCM Carrier is a neutral multicarrier operator in Brazil. Send us an address and we map every route that can actually deliver there, then come back with price, lead time and SLA — normally within two business hours, and with no CNPJ required to start.

Buying from Europe? Portugal ↔ Brazil

Dedicated IPLC and Ethernet private line between Portugal and Brazil, with presence in Lisbon, Madrid, Milan and Frankfurt through the operators in our group and partner networks. Contractual SLA, 24/7 NOC, 100 Mbps to 10 Gbps+. We accept payment in USD and EUR.

Group network: AS14840 (5–10 Tbps, 60 Hudson and Equinix Miami) and AS269311 (100 Gbps at IX.br Rio, at the Globenet cable landing station). Both on PeeringDB.

RFQ by email: [email protected] · NOC 24/7: [email protected]

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