[AusNOG] BGP hold timer values

[Scott O'Brien]

I can see how BFD and lower hold & keep-alive messages help convergence time (obviously) but am wondering how useful it is in practice?  Do most people peer with a directly connected interface on routers or through an intermediate switch?  I would be expecting most would peer with their providers using links on the router itself and would be taking advantage of the (on by default in Cisco world) fast-external-fallover.  Obviously this relies on the interface going down (so wouldn’t work with Transit over Megaport for instance or switch in between) and doesn’t help a dying control plane issue but wouldn’t the default behaviour be pretty good in helping convergence in most typical eBGP setups & failures with this feature?

~ Scotty O

> On 27 Jan 2015, at 11:19 pm, Alex Samad - Yieldbroker <Alex.Samad at yieldbroker.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi
>  
> I will have to monitor that. 
>  
> We suffered from an outage recently, with a provider we have 2 links with.  We have multiple providers.
> As a review of the incident the business asked about the 3m hold timer. In theory the way I read it, is the routes could be held for up to 3 min whilst the link is down…
>  
>  
> One of the questions was why did it take soo long ~ 8-9min for traffic to appear on the other link.  Waiting for feedback on that
> I am presuming with a lower hold timer/keep alive I can get pretty fast response as its only on this providers network I am failing over.
>  
> Alex
>  
>  
> From: Tom Berryman [mailto:Tom at connectivityit.com.au <mailto:Tom at connectivityit.com.au>] 
> Sent: Tuesday, 27 January 2015 11:09 PM
> To: Alex Samad - Yieldbroker
> Cc: David Hughes; ausnog at lists.ausnog.net <mailto:ausnog at lists.ausnog.net>
> Subject: Re: [AusNOG] BGP hold timer values
>  
> There is a bit more than just a few extra packets (as your cost) - BGP can/does have notable CPU impact on low-mid range routing gear.
>  
> With eBGP, you are talking propagation of your routes to the internet, so not all of the internet is going to see your changes for maybe up to 180 seconds. That said, it's likely most of it will be sooner than that.
>  
> Tom
>  
> On 27 Jan 2015, at 11:01 pm, Alex Samad - Yieldbroker <Alex.Samad at yieldbroker.com <mailto:Alex.Samad at yieldbroker.com>> wrote:
>  
> Hi
> 
> Okay its eBGP, currently have 4 providers, some with multiple connections. So I am thinking 6 / 20 might be good for me, business requirement for approx. 30sec response.
> I am presuming all I am looking at is extra BGP packets .. every 6 sec compared to 1 min..
> 
> 
> Alex
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: David Hughes [mailto:david at hughes.com.au <mailto:david at hughes.com.au>]
> Sent: Tuesday, 27 January 2015 9:37 PM
> To: Alex Samad - Yieldbroker
> Cc: ausnog at lists.ausnog.net <mailto:ausnog at lists.ausnog.net>
> Subject: Re: [AusNOG] BGP hold timer values
> 
> 
> I gave a lightning talk about this sort of thing a while ago at an APRICOT.  I just
> googled to find the slides and can now see just how many years ago it was.
> Gotta say I'm feeling old :)
> 
> But, it's probably still relevant although the defaults may have changed.  This
> reflected what we were running at the time - and we were trying to be
> pretty aggressive.
> 
> http://archive.apnic.net/meetings/21/docs/sigs/routing/routing- <http://archive.apnic.net/meetings/21/docs/sigs/routing/routing->
> pres-hughes-bgp.pdf
> 
> For reference I'm currently happy to run
> 
> eBGP
> : 10 / 30
> iBGP
> : 5 / 15
> 
> And I'd run this even to a single upstream.  If it fails at least you'll have
> something in your logs to say why you fell off the net for a while.  Silent
> failures are a bugger to troubleshoot.
> 
> 
> Thanks
> 
> David
> ...
> 
> 
> 
> On 27/01/2015, at 6:47 PM, Alex Samad - Yieldbroker
> <Alex.Samad at yieldbroker.com <mailto:Alex.Samad at yieldbroker.com>> wrote:
> 
> 
> Hi
> 
> I'm wonder what is considered "best practice" or good/responsible hold
> timer values for BGP.
> 
> 
> Currently I'm set at 3m, but I am considering lowering this to 30s and keep
> alive down to 20s, potentially even lower. Or if possible to use BFD & BGP,
> what's the uptake on BFD ?
> 
> 
> Alex
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