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 Limelight, you must use 54825:530 & 54825:532. This tells our routers to advertise to Limelight, and prepend twice.

Transit Providers¶

Telia Communities - ASN 1299

Available in All Facilities (except SYD2, HKG, NRT, YYZ)

Zayo Communities - ASN 6461

Available in All Facilities (except SYD2, NRT, SIN, HKG)

Hibernia Communities - ASN 5580

Available in NRT1

Cogent Communities - ASN 174

Available in SJC2

Telstra - ASN 4637

Available in NRT1, SIN3, HKG2, SYD2

GTT Communities - ASN 3257

Available in SYD2

Private Network Interconnects¶

Google

Available in SJC, IAD, EWR, AMS

Internet Exchanges¶

EQIX FR

Available in FR2

EQIX SL

Available in SL1

Available in CH3

AMS-IX

Available in AMS

NYIIX

Available in EWR

EQIX-NY

Available in EWR

DECIX-NY

Available in EWR

EQIX-SJC

Available in SJC

SFMIX

Available in SJC

EQIX-SEA

Available in SEA

EQIX-NRT

Available in NRT1

EQIX-IAD

Available in IAD

EQIX-DFW

Available in DFW2

EQIX-SYD

Available in SYD2

EQIX-SIN

Available in SIN3

ANY2 LA

Available in LAX2

EQIX HK

Available in HKG2

DE-CIX FRA

Available in FRA2

EQIX ATL

Available in ATL

EQIX LA

Available in LAX

EQIX AMS

Available in AMS1 / AM6

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.