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Internet Exchange Peering Session

An Internet exchange peering session is a BGP session which is established over an Internet exchange LAN. When peering on an IX, it is a common practice to create BGP sessions with route servers (if there are any) and other autonomous systems which you want to reach directly without having to rely on transit providers. They are configured on routers which may or may not be dedicated to routing Internet traffic.

In Peering Manager

Inside Peering Manager, you create Internet exchange peering sessions to model BGP sessions established with remote peers and that are using Internet exchange LANs. For each Internet exchange peering session that you create, the following properties can be configured (n.b. some are optional):

  • Service Reference: Optional internal service reference that can be used as a unique field to identify a session.
  • Autonomous System: autonomous system of the remote peer.
  • Internet Exchange: Internet exchange providing a LAN and IP addresses for autonomous systems to peer.
  • Status: session's status such as enabled, disabled, etc.
  • Password: a password to secure a BGP session; it can be a clear text password or an encrypted one. In the latter case, make sure that the router will not try to encrypt the password again.
  • Multihop TTL: a value to set the time to leave interval for IP packets used for the BGP control traffic. It defaults to 1 for external BGP sessions but can be set to a higher value to establish sessions that have to cross a network composed of more than one router in the transit path of the packets.
  • Import Routing Policies: a list of routing policies to apply when receiving prefixes though the BGP session.
  • Export Routing Policies: a list of routing policies to apply when advertising prefixes though the BGP session.
  • Comments: text to explain the purposes of the BGP session. Can use Markdown formatting.
  • Tags: a list of tags to help identifying and searching for a BGP session.