Finding The Peer Closest to a Client

  

Figure 2: Network Diagram - Points of Presence

Now suppose that a provider has two POPs, one on each of Network A and C, called POP X and Y respectively. This is shown in figure 2. By obtaining BGP information from upstream networks and the other POP it is possible for a POP to determine which POP is closest to a given IP address. That IP address could be that of a client wanting to access a service available on both POPs. The result could be used to determine which POP the client should connect to.

To do this each POP has an AS Number, this may be from the range 64512 to 65535, which is reserved for private use by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) as described in RFC 1930. All ASes used in theses examples are from this range. All IP addresses used in examples are from ranges reserved for private use as per RFC 1918[21].

Each POP sets up a BGP session with its upstream network or networks. In this example POP X will have a BGP session with a router in Network A. Similarly for POP Y and Network C. As the POPs will not be originating any valid routes it is important that the POPs are configured not to send any routes to the upstreams and the upstreams are configured not to accept any routes from the POPs. This is referred to as filtering. Once these BGP sessions are established each POP has a view of all the routes that its respective upstream has. This is extendible to POPs with multiple upstreams by the POP in question establishing BGP sessions with each of its upstreams. By establishing a multi-hop BGP Session between POPs X and Y it is possible for each POP to see the view of the network that POP has, and in turn the view that POP's upstream has.

If the router running the BGP sessions to Network A from POP X is queried for the prefix used to route traffic to an address in Network C then there are two probable answers; A prefix with the AS path 64600 64601 64602 as learned through the BGP session with Network A, or a prefix with AS path 64702 64602 as learned through the multi-hop BGP session with POP Y. The latter prefix should be preferred as it has a shorter AS path, though it is possible to change this using weights. As the preferred path contains the AS number of POP Y, this must be closer to the the queried address in terms of the BGP routing topology. This means that if the AS number for one of the POPs appears in the AS path for a preferred prefix then the corresponding POP must be closer to the addresses covered by the prefix that the POP making the request. If the AS numbers of multiple POPs appear in the AS path then the last POP in the AS path must be closest, as AS numbers at the end of the AS path are closer to the origin than those at the beginning.