Advanced Routing Protocols With MikroTik OSPF BGP And More

Routing is an essential component of any network infrastructure, and the use of Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is becoming increasingly common in enterprise networks. In this week's blog post, we'll explore how to configure BGP on a Mikrotik router, and the benefits this can bring to your network.

What is BGP?

Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is an interdomain routing protocol used to exchange routing and reachability information among autonomous systems (ASes) on the internet. It provides a scalable way to route traffic between networks belonging to different organizations or service providers.

Why use BGP?

BGP provides numerous benefits to a network, including:

Increased reliability: BGP allows for redundant paths between ASes, ensuring that traffic will continue to flow in the event of a failure at one of the links.
Improved performance: BGP allows for load balancing across multiple links, which can lead to a faster and more efficient network.
Flexibility: BGP supports the use of policy-based routing, which allows for granular control over how traffic is routed across the network.
Scalability: BGP is designed to work in very large networks, making it an ideal choice for service providers and large enterprises.

Basic BGP Configuration on Mikrotik

To configure BGP on a Mikrotik router, you will need to follow these steps:

Create the BGP peer: This involves defining the remote IP address and AS number of the peer router that you want to establish a BGP connection with.
Configure the local AS number: Specify the AS number that your router belongs to.
Add network prefixes: Define the prefixes that your network should advertise to the BGP peers.

Here is an example configuration for a Mikrotik router with the IP address 192.168.1.1 and AS number 65000:

 routing bgp peer add remote-address=192.168.1.2 remote-as=65001 name=peer1 network add network=10.0.0.0/24 as value=65000 router-id=192.168.1.1

In this example, we've defined a BGP peer with the IP address 192.168.1.2 and AS number 65001. We've also added the network prefix 10.0.0.0/24 to be advertised to the BGP peer. Finally, we've specified the local AS number as 65000 and the router ID as 192.168.1.1.

BGP Policies

One of the key benefits of BGP is the ability to implement policy-based routing, allowing for granular control over how traffic is routed across the network. Here are some common BGP policies:

AS PATH Prepending

AS PATH prepending involves adding additional AS numbers to the AS PATH attribute of BGP routes. This is useful to influence traffic flow between different paths by advertising less desirable routes with longer AS PATHs to discourage traffic from using certain routes.

Route Filtering

With route filtering, BGP routes can be filtered based on various attributes such as prefix length, AS path, and community. This allows for fine-grained control over how routes are advertised to BGP peers.

Read also

Next Hop Manipulation

The next hop attribute of a BGP route specifies the IP address of the next router to forward the packet to. Using next hop manipulation, the next hop attribute can be changed, resulting in traffic being forwarded to a different router.

Route Aggregation

BGP route aggregation involves combining multiple routes into a single route. This can simplify the routing table and reduce the amount of memory used by the router.

BGP Best Practices

Here are some best practices to consider when configuring BGP:

Use route summarization to reduce the size of the routing table.
Implement route filters to prevent routes from being advertised to BGP peers unless they are required.
Use BGP policies to control the flow of traffic across the network.
Regularly monitor BGP sessions to detect any issues or anomalies.

Conclusion

BGP is a powerful routing protocol that can provide numerous benefits to your network. By following best practices and implementing policies to control traffic flow, you can ensure a robust and efficient routing infrastructure. With the help of Mikrotik routers, BGP configuration becomes straightforward and less complex for IT professionals.