[FROG] FRR BGP Route Server Issues/Questions

[Michael Lambert]

Hi Donald,

Thanks for your feedback; some more comments below.

Donald Sharp wrote on 2020/03/26 08:48:22:
> 
>> 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.
> 
> I'm not sure what to recommend you do here as that this is normal EBGP behavior
> and should be expected.  We do not have enough data about your setup to fully
> recommend anything.

The FRR behavior with route-server-client seems to be a change from the
way it was handled in quagga.  Perhaps this was discussed on the FRR
mailing lists, but I haven't been able to track it down and I again
don't see anything obvious in the changelogs.  Based on previous
behavior of quagga (and even going back to the RSd derivative of GateD
in the mid-90s) my expectation is that an EBGP speaker operating in
route server mode 1) would not install learned routes in its own FIB
(FRR handles this correctly) and 2) would, unless explicitly overridden,
pass BGP updates transparently between clients (FRR does not appear to
do this, at least with next-hop).

I'm not saying the FRR behavior is incorrect, just that it's unexpected.
 I'd be interested in hearing other's views on the preferred behavior of
route-server-client.

> We'd love to have you use FRR, Feel free to join our slack
> (https://frrouting.org ) and click
> on the slack button and I'll see what I can do to help you get up and running.

Thanks, I'll take you up on this next week.

Michael