[FROG] FRR BGP Route Server Issues/Questions

[Michael Lambert]

We're running quagga (currently the Euro-IX fork, to be specific) as a
route server.  I was hoping to be able to use FRR as a more-or-less
drop-in replacement.  However, I've come up with some oddities which
make me question whether route server functionality is still supported
under FRR's bgpd.

It appears that

	neighbor <...> route-map <...> (import | export)

has disappeared from the CLI.  I couldn't find anything obvious about
this from either the git logs or the mailing list archive (but I have
not done a bisection to figure out where they disappeared).  Are import
<=> in and export <=> out the new mapping?  Or is it reversed?  There
was always something not quite intuitive about import/export.  The
documentation still refers to import/export, by the way.

I've setup a (virtual) lab environment with FRR's bgpd running under
FreeBSD 12.1 and three BGP speakers running OpenBGPd under OpenBSD 6.6.
When configuring FRR's bgpd with

	neighbor <...> route-server-client

the OpenBGPd speakers hear the expected routes from the route server,
but with the route server itself as the next-hop.  If I include

	neighbor <...> attribute-unchanged next-hop

the next-hop is correctly propagated, but its presence would, on the
surface, seem to make specifying "route-server-client" syntactic fluff.

I also see that the

show bgp [view <name>] (ipv4|ipv6) (unicast|multicast) rsclient <...>

commands have disappeared, so the "obvious" way of checking route server
functionality from within bgpd has, at best, changed.

Assuming that the intent is to continue to support route server
functionality within FRR, I have a couple of questions.  Is my approach
of specifying route-server-client/attribute-unchanged correct or am I
missing something that makes FRR's bgpd work like quagga's bgpd?  And
are there plans to update the route server documentation to match the
current implementation?  We've been using bgpd for many years; I'd like
to continue doing so with a non-orphaned version.

Thanks,

Michael

-- 
Michael H Lambert, GigaPoP Manager             Phone: +1 412 268-4960
Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center/3ROX          FAX:   +1 412 268-5832
300 S Craig St, Pittsburgh, PA  15213 USA      lambert at psc.edu