07-06-2016 12:44 PM
I'm attempting to wrap my head around a very critical piece of setting up BGP between 2 ISP's concerning how many Virtual Routers are required.
I currently have 1 ISP (A) up and running on BGP just fine and my other ISP (B) will be converted to BGP on Monday. Both will be advertising my public IP space from ARIN.
So my question is, do I put both ISP A's and ISP B's interfaces on the same VR or do they need to be on their own separate VR's?
I'm receiving a few conflicted answers to this question, so I'm looking for real world experience.
Currently I'm still a strong believer in that I need to just add my ISP B as its own Peer Group to my current primary Virtual Router, add ISP B's own subinterface to the Resdistribution Profile along with ISP A's subinterface, configure a new Import Rule for ISP B plus an Export Rule with a Prepend of 2 if I choose to, and finally check ECMP for "load balancing".
All this sounded great until I was told the following from a Palo rep: "Two interfaces ( belonging to same VR ) cannot have IP addresses from the same subnet. x.x.x.x/24"
That threw a wrench into my whole thought process because both ISP's are advertising my /24 from ARIN, but are physically connected with 2 different /30's to each ISP's switch.
07-07-2016 09:13 AM - edited 07-07-2016 09:18 AM
You can have one VR. Prefer one BGP peer and if that BGP peer goes down then it will automatically start using second ISP
Check this KB
07-07-2016 09:46 AM
My import rules are default routes (0.0.0.0/0) so wouldn't ECMP be a better model for load balancing?
I do agree now though that a single VR is all that is required.
07-10-2016 03:43 AM
If you want to load balance then your options are to use ECMP (if you have PanOS 7 where this feature was introduced) or configure policy based routing. With policy based routing you choose what types of traffic by source or other criteria to forward to which ISP.
ECMP Load-Balancing Algorithms
Configure ECMP on a Virtual Router
Enable ECMP for Multiple BGP Autonomous Systems
07-26-2016 06:16 AM
I tied each ISP's BGP link into one VR and what I was originally confused about was how to tie our /24 ARIN space in with these links.
In short I didn't realize you can apply the /24 public space to any interface and just advertise it out with the Redistribution Profile. I was thinking it had to be applied to both external ethernet ports.
Not the case, just tie the /24 to one of the external facing ports as subinterfaces and then I put a simple /32 on the other ISP's subinterface for ping testing. Not really necessary, but I was playing around.
11-02-2016 11:38 AM
@KyleFreise wrote:I tied each ISP's BGP link into one VR and what I was originally confused about was how to tie our /24 ARIN space in with these links.
In short I didn't realize you can apply the /24 public space to any interface and just advertise it out with the Redistribution Profile. I was thinking it had to be applied to both external ethernet ports.
Not the case, just tie the /24 to one of the external facing ports as subinterfaces and then I put a simple /32 on the other ISP's subinterface for ping testing. Not really necessary, but I was playing around.
What happens if the physical interface goes down? Will the sub-interface go down as well?
11-02-2016 12:25 PM
Yes if the primary interface (say ethernet1/18) goes down, then the subinterface (ethernet1/18.1) will go down as well.
I've yet had that happen on the BGP links as my issues stem from downstream routing issues during maintenance or routing equipment failure down one of the pipes.
11-03-2016 07:21 AM
This is currently the approach I am using. I was just wondering if there was a better way. Thanks for the reply.
11-04-2016 10:34 AM - edited 11-04-2016 10:35 AM
Can you explain a little more how you use a redistribution profile to advertise prefixes with BGP to your ISP? I have BGP running on many PAs and just use standard BGP with export rules and redistribution rules, no subinterfaces in use.
11-04-2016 12:29 PM
My redistribution profile is using Source Type "connect" and the interfaces are the main untrust facing interfaces as well as their respective sub-interfaces.
The import rule is simply matching and allowing 0.0.0.0/0, while the export rule is matching the ARIN space we have. Then the redistribution profile is referenced within the 'Redist Rules' tab for the BGP configuration.
Again, I'm only redistributing outward facing interfaces (including the subs).
11-04-2016 01:30 PM
In the Redist Rules, did you ever try with just entering your public space subnet instead of referencing the redistribution profile?
As long as there is an entry for the public space in the routing table of the PA, this should work fine. Having a subinterface on the ARIN assigned network will satisfy this or you can create a dummy route, sort of like routing a prefix to null0 on a router.
11-04-2016 01:50 PM
Can you add subnets to a Redist Rule directly? All I see are settings for Community, MED, Preference, etc.
11-04-2016 02:12 PM - edited 11-04-2016 02:13 PM
Yep, just type the subnet directly in the box.
11-07-2016 01:56 PM
That's interesting, I never took the time to read that line of text.
What are you using for your dummy static route?
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