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Author SHA1 Message Date
Rayhaan JaufeerallyandClaude Fable 5.1 6d8f89e509 policy, fib: blackhole routing for routes with the BLACKHOLE community
ci / check (push) Canceled after 0s
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ci / interop (push) Canceled after 0s
ci / fuzz (push) Canceled after 0s
Before this change, a route carrying the BLACKHOLE community (65535:666,
RFC 7999) from an EBGP neighbor was always rejected with the reason
"blackhole request", and nothing discarded traffic. A customer under a
denial-of-service attack had no way to ask this router to drop traffic
to an address.

This change adds `accept_blackholes` to the import policy. When it is
set, a route with the BLACKHOLE community is accepted if:

* its prefix is a single address, a /32 or a /128 (otherwise it is
  rejected with the new reason "blackhole for more than one address");
  the `max_ipv4_prefix_length` and `max_ipv6_prefix_length` limits do
  not apply, as RFC 7999 section 3.2 recommends;
* the address is inside a prefix the neighbor may announce, if
  `prefixes` is configured, regardless of the entry's `max_length`
  (new `PrefixSet::covers`); without a prefix list, an address inside
  the local AS's own prefixes is rejected as before ("prefix is our
  own");
* the AS path, origin and RPKI checks that apply to every route pass.

The next hop of an accepted blackhole route is not checked for
third-party addresses and is not resolved, because traffic is never
forwarded to it. The route takes part in best path selection as usual;
a host route is normally the active route for its address.

The kernel task installs the active route as a kernel blackhole route
(`RTN_BLACKHOLE`, shown by `ip route` as `blackhole PREFIX proto bgp`).
Blackhole routes left by an earlier run are adopted at startup like
other routes of ours. The route is advertised to other neighbors as the
export policy and export limits permit, with the community intact, so a
provider that honors BLACKHOLE can discard the traffic upstream.

Implementation:

* `plan::Target` becomes an enum: `Via { gateway, interface }` or
  `Discard`. `plan::resolve` takes a `blackhole` flag and returns
  `Discard` for such routes without looking at the next hop (the
  own-network check still applies). No nexthop object is made for a
  discard target.
* `AttrSet::is_blackhole` reads the community off the stored attribute
  bytes, like `next_hop` and `as_path`, so the kernel task, the
  revalidator and the RPKI revalidation can ask it of every route.
* `ImportPolicy::is_blackhole_request` and `check_blackhole_prefix`
  carry the import side; the import flow (`routes.rs`) computes once per
  UPDATE whether its routes are an accepted blackhole request and skips
  the next hop checks for them.
* `Status::blackholes` and the `blackholes` field of `/api/kernel` count
  the installed blackhole routes; the status page shows the count next
  to the installed routes.

Not covered: a prefix this router originates with the BLACKHOLE
community is advertised but not installed as a blackhole route. The
documentation says to add a kernel blackhole route by hand for that
case.

Documentation: the "Blackhole Routes" section of the import policy
guide replaces "Blackhole Requests", the kernel guide gains a "Blackhole
Routes" section, the configuration reference describes
`accept_blackholes`, the HTTP API reference describes `blackholes`, and
the RFC 7999 rows of the standards reference are updated.

Testing: unit tests for the attribute check, the prefix checks and the
plan; integration tests that a blackhole request is refused by default
and, with `accept_blackholes`, taken for one address inside the peer's
space and refused otherwise, with the recorded reasons; a kernel test
that a blackhole request becomes a kernel blackhole route whatever its
next hop, is removed on withdrawal and is adopted after a restart. The
existing kernel tests, the interoperability lab and the workspace tests
pass.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-10-08 23:08:50 +02:00
Rayhaan JaufeerallyandClaude Fable 5.1 3608897245 fib: resolve next hops through the kernel's routing table
Before this change, Ferrix only installed a route if its BGP next hop was
directly connected: an address in the subnet of an interface that is up.
A route with any other next hop was held at import and never installed.
This made routes from iBGP neighbors unusable unless the neighbor set
itself as the next hop, and it is why the route reflector rewrites the
next hop on every reflected route.

Ferrix now resolves a next hop that is not directly connected through the
kernel's own routes, as other BGP implementations do:

* The route is looked up in one kernel table, the "resolution table"
  (`kernel { resolution_table: N }`, default 254 = main). The longest
  prefix that contains the next hop wins; of several routes for that
  prefix, the one with the lowest metric.
* Because the Linux kernel does not resolve gateways recursively, the BGP
  route is installed with the gateway and interface of the kernel route
  that covers the next hop. A kernel route without a gateway (a route
  onto a point-to-point or tunnel interface) makes the next hop itself
  the gateway on that interface. A kernel route that names a nexthop
  object is resolved through the object.
* Routes with protocol `bgp` never resolve a next hop, whether Ferrix's
  own or another daemon's. A next hop that is reachable only through a
  BGP route depends on another BGP next hop, and such chains are not
  predictable.
* The default route does not resolve a next hop unless
  `kernel { resolve_via_default_route: true }` is set. On a router the
  default route points at a transit provider, and a next hop that is
  reachable only through it is not usable.
* Blackhole, unreachable and prohibit routes make the next hop
  unresolvable, as does a route whose interface is down.

The same resolution is used by the import policy and the revalidator, so
a route whose next hop cannot be resolved is still held rather than
selected (RFC 4271 section 9.1.2.1), and is taken when a kernel route
makes its next hop resolvable.

Implementation:

* `bgp_fib::routes::KernelRoutes` holds the routes of the resolution
  table and answers longest-prefix lookups.
* `bgp_fib::topology::Topology` bundles the interfaces, the kernel routes
  and the kernel's nexthop objects into one value. The kernel task
  publishes it through `Fib::topology()` (formerly `Fib::interfaces()`),
  and `plan::resolve` takes it in place of `Interfaces`.
* The kernel task learns the resolution table with a dump of that table
  alone, using NETLINK_GET_STRICT_CHK (Linux 4.20 and later; older
  kernels get a dump of every table, filtered in user space). It asks
  again, debounced, whenever a dedicated netlink socket that is a member
  of the route multicast groups receives anything. That socket is given a
  64 KiB receive buffer on purpose: the kernel reports Ferrix's own route
  installs on it too, up to a million at a time, and an ENOBUFS overflow
  is treated as the same hint as a message. Its contents are never
  parsed. An earlier attempt to receive route notifications on the
  socket that writes routes failed, because the kernel only excludes the
  requesting socket from a notification when NLM_F_ECHO was requested.
* `Unresolved::NotConnected` is replaced by `NoRoute`, `OnlyDefault` and
  `Discarded`, which appear as the reasons in `/api/kernel` and on the
  status page.

Configuration: two new `kernel` fields, `resolution_table` and
`resolve_via_default_route`, documented in the configuration reference
and in the kernel guide, whose "Next Hop Resolution" section is rewritten.
Existing configurations behave as before except that routes with far
next hops may now be installed where a static or connected route covers
the next hop.

Testing: unit tests for `KernelRoutes`, `Topology` and resolution
through static, tunnel, nexthop-object, blackhole and default routes; a
kernel test (`a_far_next_hop_goes_the_way_the_kernels_routes_say`) that
checks the installed routes follow static, tunnel and nexthop-object
routes as they are added, replaced and removed; the existing kernel
tests, the interoperability lab with FRR and BIRD, and the workspace
tests, all passing. Installing 200,000 routes still runs at about
186,000 routes per second.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-10-08 22:23:27 +02:00
Rayhaan JaufeerallyandClaude Fable 5.1 23e8b4aadb One word for a route that is not taken: rejected
ci / check (push) Canceled after 0s
ci / docs (push) Canceled after 0s
ci / interop (push) Canceled after 0s
ci / fuzz (push) Canceled after 0s
The API, the metrics, the status page and the documentation say a route
is "rejected" (/api/routes/rejected, rejected_routes,
bgp_routes_rejected_total, "Rejected routes"), and the reason type is
Rejection. The code that keeps the record said "refused": RefusalLog,
PeerRefusals, RefusedRoute, RefusalsView, RefusedRouteView, the refusals
module. Those are RejectionLog, PeerRejections, RejectedRoute,
RejectionsView, RejectedRouteView and rejections now, and the log line
says "Rejected a route". Nothing the API or the metrics expose changes.

Refusing stays what it was: a connection turned away at the door
(server::Refusal), a kernel that would not take a route, an OPEN we
would not have.

The two aliases of SendReceive, AddPathSendRecv and OrfSendRecv, are
gone; it is one type.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-10-06 12:10:58 +02:00
Rayhaan JaufeerallyandClaude Opus 5.5 b16227c51f Route reflection, with ourselves as next hop
A route learned from one router of our AS went to no other (RFC 4271
§9.2.1), so every router needed a session with every other. A router at
the end of a single link, with one session to its neighbour inside the AS,
heard only of what that neighbour learned itself, and nothing of what the
neighbour had from the routers behind it.

A peer in our own AS can now be made a route reflector client
(`route_reflector_client`, RFC 4456). What a client sends goes to all our
routers; what the others send goes to the clients. A reflected route gets
ORIGINATOR_ID (where it started, if it does not say) and our cluster ID at
the front of CLUSTER_LIST; it is not sent back to the router it started
at, nor round to a cluster it has been through, and one that comes back
anyway is refused as "route reflected back to us". The cluster ID is the
router ID unless `cluster_id` says otherwise. The two attributes are now
decoded as such rather than kept as bytes, and are never sent to other
networks.

Unlike a standard reflector, this one is the next hop of what it reflects,
as it is of everything it announces: there is no resolving a next hop
that is not a neighbour, so a client reaches what lies behind another
router through the reflector.

Only peers in our own AS can be clients; the configuration refuses the
setting for any other. Nothing changes in what other networks are told:
Only to Customer marks go along with reflected routes, and every
receiving session keeps its own max_prefixes.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-10-05 18:10:35 +02:00
Rayhaan JaufeerallyandClaude Opus 5.5 65f136048e Graceful restart (RFC 4724, RFC 8538)
A peer that restarts keeps its routes with us, and we keep ours with our
peers while we restart, so that a restart withdraws nothing across the
network and the machine goes on forwarding. On by default for every
peer; `graceful_restart` sets the restart time we give, caps how long a
peer's routes are kept, or turns it off.

When a peer restarts: its routes are marked stale in the routing table,
and chosen as before, for at most its restart time. When it is back, what
it sends again is fresh, and the stale routes of a family go at its
End-of-RIB marker, or after the cap; at once for a family whose
forwarding it did not keep. Only a connection that failed counts as a
restart, and, with RFC 8538 agreed, an expired hold timer or a
NOTIFICATION other than a Hard Reset. The stale mark is a bit of the
route's word that selection never looks at.

When we restart: SIGUSR1 leaves the kernel's routes where they are,
closes the sessions without a word where graceful restart is agreed, and
exits with status 75, on which the systemd unit starts us again. The next
start finds the routes in the kernel, says so in its OPENs (R, and F where
forwarding was kept), and has them go once every peer has sent its
End-of-RIB. Our own End-of-RIB markers for learned routes wait for that
too. SIGTERM still stops for good, now with a Hard Reset where RFC 8538 is
agreed, as are errors of ours.

The status page and API show what was agreed with each peer, the routes
kept while a peer restarts, and which routes are stale. Tested against
FRR and BIRD in a new phase of the interoperability lab, and with routes
kept in a real kernel over a restart.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-10-04 22:43:47 +02:00
Rayhaan JaufeerallyandClaude Fable 5.1 9ca86ede2f Harden import, the kernel task and the RTR client after review
Three independent reviews (hijack resistance, reliability, code health)
of the whole tree. This is what they found that could let a bad route in
or take the daemon down.

Hijacks:
- A route had two paths on a two-octet session, AS_PATH and AS4_PATH,
  read in two places by two rules. A peer could make the origin checked
  on import differ from the one checked at revalidation, and get an
  RPKI-invalid route into the table. AS4_PATH is now merged into AS_PATH
  once, on receipt (RFC 6793 §4.2.3), and nothing else knows of it.
- The next hop is judged on import: it must be usable, agreed on
  (RFC 8950), and by default the peer itself.
- Our own originated prefixes are not taken from other networks.
- A route for a network the machine is on is never put in the kernel.
- Paths with an AS_SET are refused (RFC 9774).
- A configured peer gets one session, not one per BGP Identifier.
- More IPv6 special-purpose prefixes are bogons.

Reliability:
- A batch of requests the kernel refused could overflow the netlink
  socket and end the daemon. The socket has room now, a lost answer or a
  silent kernel means asking what is there, and neither is fatal.
- Working the routes out again within the grace period after a restart
  no longer drops the routes being kept.
- That work can no longer be put off for ever by interface changes.
- Peers whose sessions keep failing are slowed down.
- Unused attribute sets are swept when they pile up, not only each
  minute.
- Log lines a peer can cause are said once in a while.
- An RTR answer is bounded in size and time; data cannot expire between
  two refreshes.
- The shard of a key is taken from a stirred hash: neighbouring bits of
  the hash proved alike for prefixes in a row. The test that showed it,
  failing one run in sixteen, is deterministic now.

The lab has a phase, hijacks, in which FRR tries the first three.
route::apply is a struct with methods instead of nested closures, and
the kernel task's loop is shorter.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-10-02 19:13:40 +02:00
Rayhaan JaufeerallyandClaude Fable 5.1 fd2248feb5 Peer at link-local addresses: fe80::1%eth0
A peer's endpoint may be a link-local IPv6 address with the interface it
is on. Such a peer is the address and the interface together, wherever
peers are told apart: admission, collisions, hold-downs, the refusal log,
the status page. The interface is looked up by name each time it is
needed, so one that appears later or is made anew is found.

Our routes go out with our link-local address in both places of
MP_REACH_NLRI's next hop, as FRR sends its own. A peer's link-local next
hop is taken alone, twice, or after "::" (BIRD), and resolved in the
kernel on the interface of the session rather than by looking fe80::/64
up, which every interface has.

The lab has a new phase, linklocal: sessions with FRR (by interface, with
radvd beside the daemon) and BIRD over a LAN with link-local addresses
only, both families, pings across, the interface down and up.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-10-02 18:24:13 +02:00
Rayhaan JaufeerallyandClaude Fable 5.1 92e013ca01 Carry IPv4 routes over IPv6 sessions with IPv6 next hops (RFC 8950)
For a link that has only IPv6 addresses.

- The Extended Next Hop capability is offered on every session over IPv6
  whose families include IPv4 unicast, and used if the peer offers it too.
  Nothing to configure.
- On such a session our IPv4 routes go out in MP_REACH_NLRI with the
  session's IPv6 address as next hop, and are withdrawn in
  MP_UNREACH_NLRI. Without the agreement they are not sent, as before.
- IPv4 routes are read with an IPv6 next hop, global or global with
  link-local.
- The kernel installer resolves an IPv4 route's IPv6 next hop like any
  other and installs it: by way of an IPv6 nexthop object, or with RTA_VIA
  where routes carry their own gateway.

Tested against a real kernel in both modes, with a link-local next hop
too, and in the lab against FRR and BIRD: the new `v6only` phase takes
the IPv4 addresses off the exchange LAN, runs one IPv6 session with each
router for both families, and pings IPv4 across.

Sessions between link-local addresses are not supported yet.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-10-02 17:58:03 +02:00
Rayhaan JaufeerallyandClaude Fable 5.1 321af51e4b Add an interoperability lab with FRR, BIRD and Routinator
scripts/interop/lab.sh runs the daemon against FRR, BIRD and Routinator,
each in a network namespace on one exchange LAN, and checks what every
side ends up with: sessions and routes over IPv4 and IPv6 with their
attributes, four-octet AS numbers, ADD-PATH, RFC 9234 roles and Only to
Customer, RTR version 2 and invalid routes, route refresh, session resets,
killed peers, a cut wire, the daemon stopped and killed, a table of a
million routes and a restart under it, role mismatch and the prefix limit.
All of it passes against FRR 10.5.1, BIRD 2.18 and Routinator 0.15.2.

scripts/interop/real-rpki.sh checks the RTR client against a Routinator
with the real RPKI: 713,258 IPv4 and 187,479 IPv6 VRPs and 3,379 ASPAs,
the same numbers on both sides.

What the lab found, fixed here:

- A daemon restarted with its routes in the kernel removed them all at
  once, its table being empty until the peers had sent theirs again, and
  then put them back: no forwarding meanwhile. Routes of an earlier run
  are now kept for `stale_seconds` (120 by default) and only those nobody
  announced again are removed. A restart under a million routes takes
  1.1 s to be in step, with nothing removed.
- FRR ends a session it loses to a collision with a state machine error
  without a subcode, which was shown as "error code 5 subcode 0".

CI gets a job that runs the lab.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-10-02 17:44:49 +02:00
Rayhaan JaufeerallyandClaude Fable 5.1 1de75fc610 Install a full table in the kernel in about a second
A million IPv4 routes took 1.6 s to install (release build); they take
1.1 s now, and 0.5 s to remove instead of 1.15 s. Most of what is left is
the kernel's own work on each route.

- Nexthop objects (Linux 5.3 and later): a gateway is put in the kernel
  once and routes name it, so the kernel checks it once and not for every
  route. The daemon makes its own objects, uses nobody else's, is told
  when one of its own is removed and puts it back, and removes them when
  it stops, which takes all the routes that name them along at once.
  `without_nexthop_objects` turns this off; a kernel without them is
  noticed and served as before.
- Writing to the kernel is a task of its own, fed through a short queue,
  so the next batch is worked out while the kernel is busy with the last.
  "In step" is said when the kernel has done the batch that completes the
  table, not when it was handed over.
- What a next hop resolves to is kept, by next hop: it was looked up among
  the machine's addresses for every route.
- A quicker hash for the plan's maps, and no lookups in the ones that are
  empty.

Fixes a hole found on the way: when an interface went down and came back
within the second it takes us to react, the kernel had dropped our routes
and we did not put them back, since nothing about them had changed for
us. After such a change the kernel is now asked what it actually has.

scripts/in-namespace.sh runs one command in a scratch namespace;
FERRIX_ROUTES sets the size of the timing test.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-10-02 17:13:44 +02:00
Rayhaan JaufeerallyandClaude Fable 5.1 1fc44798b7 Install best routes in the Linux kernel over netlink
New crate bgp-fib. It follows the routing table's best routes and keeps
the kernel's routing table the same, and learns the machine's interfaces
and addresses from the kernel, which is what says whether a next hop can
be reached.

- netlink: the rtnetlink messages used (routes, addresses, links, errors),
  as bytes and back. No I/O; property tested and fuzzed.
- interfaces: what is directly reachable, and from which interface.
- plan: what to ask the kernel for, given the best routes and what the
  kernel has. No I/O; tested against a model kernel.
- kernel (Linux only): the sockets and the task. Requests go in batches;
  routes of ours found at startup are kept if still right and removed if
  not; a change of interfaces has every route worked out again; a clean
  stop removes our routes.

Only routes marked proto bgp with the configured table and metric are
ever touched. A best route is installed if its next hop is a neighbor;
next hops further away are not resolved through other routes yet, and
such prefixes are counted and shown instead.

Configured with `kernel { table metric }`; off by default. The daemon
needs CAP_NET_ADMIN and stops if the kernel refuses it. On shutdown it
closes sessions and then removes its routes.

/api/kernel and the status page show installed, unresolved and refused
counts, the last error and the interfaces; five bgp_kernel_* metrics.

Testing: scripts/kernel-tests.sh runs, in network namespaces of their
own and with only the capabilities the daemon needs, the installer
against `ip route`, the daemon with a peer, and two daemons that route
for each other with pings across over IPv4 and IPv6.
scripts/linux-vm.sh runs that, or anything else, in a Lima VM from
macOS. CI runs the kernel tests and fuzzes the netlink decoder.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-10-02 15:15:43 +02:00