BGP Global Communities¶

Default Behavior¶

The default behavior (no community) for customer prefixes is that they are advertised to all providers and peers within the facility the prefix is received in.

Global Anycast BGP¶

If you're using an IP range across multiple regions you can use Equinix Metal™'s Anycast community:

54825:222

• Function: Anycast routing

By tagging your routes with this community, Equinix Metal will advertise your routes to only transit and peering we maintain consistently on a global basis. Regional ISPs we connect with (e.g. Verizon in the New York metro area) will not learn your routes, as advertising to them may result in "scenic" routing for you with global Anycast configurations.

Please note that this community should only be used for global Anycast deployments and is not advised for use in a single datacenter, as it will limit the number of available paths/providers you have access to. It should only be deployed by you seeking BGP Anycast topology, with multiple server instances deployed in each Equinix Metal datacenter.

Advanced BGP¶

You can fine tune reachability to the IPs you announce by attaching Traffic Engineering (TE) Communities.

The purpose of TE Communities is to tell the Equinix Metal network which providers and peers to advertise your prefixes to, allowing for more granular control than default (sans-community) BGP or the Global Anycast BGP community referened above (54825:222).

Using any of the communities listed below gives you full control over the oubound advertisment of your prefixes. You are able to advertise to any combination of providers and peers that exist within a location. Each provider has its own set of communities. If a provider's community is not included on a prefix, we will not advertise it to that provider.

Combining Communities¶

You are able to combine communities for granular control of your announcements. For example, you can use a combination of communities to advertise to Telia and Zayo, but not Limelight. Or you could advertise to Telia, prepend three times to Zayo, and advertise to an Internet Exchange (IX).

Usage Guidelines¶

To use the communities correctly please follow the guide below:

• Other communities such as 54825:222 and 54825:223 should be removed

• To advertise a prefix to any provider, the “Advertise to XXX” must be used. E.g. to advertise to Telia, 54825:500 must be used. If only a single provider community is used, the prefix will only be advertised to that provider.

• Combine communities to advertise to multiple providers, e.g. Use 54825:500 & 54825:510 to advertise to both Telia and Zayo

• To prepend you must include the “Advertise to XXX” community as well as the prepend community. E.g to prepend twice to Zayo, you must use 54825:510 & 54825:512. This tells our routers to advertise to Zayo, and prepend twice.

Transit Providers¶

Telia Communities - ASN 1299

Available in All Facilities (Except Sydney, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Seoul)

Zayo Communities - ASN 6461

Available in All Facilities (Except Sydney, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Seoul, Singapore)

Hibernia Communities - ASN 5580

Available in Tokyo

TATA Communities - ASN 6453

Available in Amsterdam (More sites comming soon)

Cogent Communities - ASN 174

Available in SJC2

Telstra - ASN 4637

Available in Tokyo, Singapore, Hong Kong, Seoul, Sydney

GTT Communities - ASN 3257

Available in Sydney

Private Network Interconnects¶

Google

Available in San Jose, Ashburn, New York, Amsterdam

Internet Exchanges¶

EQIX London

Available in London

London Internet Exchange (LINX)

Available in London

Toronto Internet Exchange (TORIX)

Available in Toronto

EQIX Toronto

Available in Toronto

EQIX Frankfurt

Available in Frankfurt

EQIX Seoul

Available in Seoul

EQIX Chicago

Available in Chicago

Amsterdam Internet Exchange (AMS-IX)

Available in Amsterdam

New York Internet Exchange (NYIIX)

Available in New York

EQIX New York

Available in New York

DECIX-NY

Available in New York

EQIX San Jose

Available in Silicon Valley

SFMIX

Available in Silicon Valley

EQIX Seattle

Available in Seattle

EQIX Tokyo

Available in Toyko

EQIX Ashburn

Available in Washingon DC

EQIX Dallas

Available in Dallas

EQIX Sydney

Available in Sydney

EQIX Singapore

Available in Singapore

ANY2 LA

Available in Los Angeles

EQIX Hong Kong

Available in Hong Kong

DE-CIX Frankfurt

Available in Frankfurt

EQIX Atlanta

Available in Atlanta

EQIX Los Angeles

Available in Los Angeles

EQIX Amsterdam

Available in Amsterdam

Additional communities for Internet Exchanges only¶

These communities can be attached to prefixes advertised to any Internet Exchange (IX). This allows you to advertise to the whole IX, except for some specific peers. We are able to add more of these communities by request.

Most IX support their own "do not advertise" communities in the format of 0:ASN where ASN is the peer not to advertise to. We will pass on these communities if they are attached on your prefixes.

Other communities¶

54825:666

• Function: BGP blackhole.

Equinix Metal will blackhole traffic to your prefix, as well as signal supporting transit providers and peering partners to do the same. We support de-aggregation down to the /32 (IPv4) and /128 (IPv6) level with this community only.

54825:65535

• Function: Do not Export

Equinix Metal will accept the prefix from your servers however, we will not advertise the prefix to any peer or transit provider. The prefix will be routable within the Equinix Metal network only.

Local Preference Communities¶

Customers can use the following communities to adjust the local preference on prefixes advertised to Equinix Metal. By default, any prefixes we receive will be set to a local preference of 300 in the site in which they are received. We will advertise those prefixes to all sites, where they will be set a local preference of 250

If you wish to adjust these default values, the following communities can be used.

Using these communities will override the default local preferences mentioned above, and the values will not change as prefixes are advertised to other sites. This means if you set a prefix to 270 in one site, every other site will receive that prefix with the same local preference.

Please note that prefixes are only advertised externally in the local site they are received in.