UAE-IX route server Informational BGP Communities

Route Origin

The route server will tag all prefixes with certain BGP Communities to indicate their origin. You can use this information to determine where a certain prefix has been injected into the UAE-IX/DE-CIX switching platform. This gives you the possibility to filter routes learned from the route servers based on geographical location. 

Currently we tag the following information: 

Switch: Indicates at which switch a prefix has been injected into the UAE-IX/DE-CIX platform. We tag the corresponding edge switch of the port. 

  • Example: edge01.dxb1

Metro: The metropolitan region corresponding to the switch 

  • Example: Dubai

Country: The country corresponding to the above (in M.49 format

  • Example: UAE

Continent: The continent corresponding to the above (in M.49 format

  • Example: Asia

This means that every prefix you'll learn from the route servers will have four (additional) BGP Communities attached which will indicate location information.

BGP Community Graph

To avoid ambiguity about the semantics of a certain BGP Community, especially when being present multiple times, we strip all BGP Communities from the range that we use for route origin tagging on import. This is:

  • 65101:*
  • 65102:*
  • 65103:*
  • 65104:*

Overview

ContinentM.49 Region Code (Continent)Continent BGP ComCountryM.49 Region Code (Country)Country BGP ComMetroMetro CodeMetro BGP Com

Edge Switch

Switch Code

Switch BGP Com

Asia

142

65104:142UAE AE

784

65103:784

DXB (UAE-IX)

500065102:5000

sw001.dxb1

5050

65101:5050

edge01.dxb1

5079

65101:5079

edge01.dxb2

5080

65101:5080
Europe EU

150

65104:150

France FR25065103:250MRS (DE-CIX)600065102:6000edge02.mrs1609765101:6097
Unknown Continent

65535

65104:65535Unknown Country

65535

65104:65535Unknown Metro6553565102:65535

Unknown Switch

65535

65101:65535

Examples

Example 1

A prefix has the following BGP Communities attached to it:

  • 65104:142
  • 65103:784
  • 65102:5000
  • 65101:5079

From these BGP Communities you can deduce that this particular prefix has been injected in Asia (65104:142), UAE (65103:784) in metro region Dubai (65102:5000) at edge01.dxb1 (65101:5079).
 

Example 2

A prefix has the following BGP Communities attached to it:

  • 65104:150
  • 65103:250
  • 65102:6000
  • 65101:6054

From these BGP Communities you can deduce that this particular prefix has been injected in Europe (65104:150), France (65103:250) in metro region Marseille (65102:6000) at edge02.mrs1 (65101:6097).