A router feeding a collector every path (all_paths) was 4.8 GB resident
with a table that should take a third of that. A heap profile of the
daemon in the Linux VM, with four full tables and such a collector,
showed where it went: the exporter kept, for every route it had
advertised, the route's outgoing form, the parsed attribute list it was
dressed with, through an `Arc<Dressed>` in the per-route record. One
such form lived for every distinct attribute set advertised, about a
kilobyte each, for the life of the session, on top of the exporter's
cache of 262,144 of them. The record needs only to tell whether a route
changed, and the table's own attribute set, which is in memory anyway,
tells it that: the outgoing form is a function of the set, the peer the
route came from and the policy.
This change:
* `Sent` holds an `Arc<AttrSet>` instead of an `Arc<Dressed>`, and a
route is sent again when its set differs. `Verdict::All` carries both
while a flush is on.
* `DRESSED_KEPT` goes from 262,144 to 65,536: a kilobyte a set, so 64 MB
rather than 256 MB a session at most; what a flush is sending holds
its own.
* The status page's header shows the daemon's memory as jemalloc
accounts for it (allocated and resident), `/api/status` has the six
figures (`memory`: allocated, active, metadata, resident, mapped,
retained), and `bgp_memory_bytes{kind}` exports them. jemalloc is built
with statistics for this, and `bgp-web` reads them through
`tikv-jemalloc-ctl`.
* `scripts/profile/full-table.sh` gains `COLLECTOR=1`, a collector
session over IPv6 that takes both families with ADD-PATH, and `HEAP=1`,
which builds the daemon with jemalloc's heap profiler (the new
`heap-profiling` feature of the daemon crate, not for production) and
turns the profile into a flame graph with jeprof; and it reports
memory with the table in and again 30 s later. The feeder
(`crates/bench/examples/feed.rs`) plays the collector with
`FEED_COLLECTOR=1`.
Measured in the VM, four peers' full tables and a collector sent every
path (4.9 million routes advertised): 1,723 MiB resident before, 1,286
MiB after, with jemalloc's allocated figure from 1,500 MiB to 946 MiB.
Without the collector the same tables take 630 MiB, so the collector's
bookkeeping is now about 50 bytes a route advertised. Of the resident
figure, some 400 MiB was pages jemalloc had freed and not yet returned:
it returns them on allocator activity only, and a router that has its
tables in allocates little. jemalloc is now built with its background
thread on (the `background_threads` feature), which returns them on
time: 1,020 MiB resident 30 s after the load, against 1,286 MiB without
it.
Documentation: `memory` in the HTTP API reference, `bgp_memory_bytes`
in the metrics reference and the monitoring guide, the script's new
settings in the testing guide.
Testing: the ADD-PATH integration tests pass, including the collector
ones; the heap profile and the figures above are from
`PEERS=4 COLLECTOR=1 HEAP=1 scripts/profile/full-table.sh` in the VM.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Before this change there was no way to see where the daemon's CPU time
goes while it receives a full Internet routing table: the benchmarks in
crates/bench time the routing table in-process, without the sessions,
the policy, the kernel task or the production allocator. Profiling the
daemon itself showed that a third of its CPU time during a full-table
load went into `Plan::blackholes()`, which walked every installed route
to count the blackhole ones each time the kernel task published its
status, after every batch of changes; with 1.2 million routes
installed that was 3.9 seconds from the first route to a synced kernel
instead of 2.0.
This change:
* Keeps counts of blackhole routes and of routes kept unconfirmed from
an earlier run in `Plan`, in step with the map through `Plan::put`
and `Plan::take`, so that `Plan::blackholes()` and `Plan::kept()`
cost nothing. `kept()` had the same scan; it ran only while routes of
an earlier run were being kept, which is exactly during a full-table
load after a restart.
* Adds `scripts/profile/full-table.sh`, which builds the daemon with the
new `profiling` Cargo profile (release with line tables) and frame
pointers, runs it in a network namespace joined by a veth pair to a
second namespace, feeds it the synthetic table from there as one or
more neighbors, samples it with `perf`, and writes a flame graph
(inferno), flat profiles by self and inclusive time, the time until
the routes are in the table and in the kernel, and the daemon's
resident memory. `PEERS`, `KERNEL`, `SCALE_DOWN`, `HOLD_SECS`, `FREQ`
and `OUT` control it. From macOS it runs in the Linux VM through
scripts/linux-vm.sh.
* Adds the load generator `crates/bench/examples/feed.rs`: it connects
from the peers' addresses, completes the handshakes, writes each
neighbor's table, drains what the daemon sends back and holds the
sessions open with KEEPALIVEs. `TestPeer::into_stream` gives it the
connection after the handshake.
* Updates the testing guide: the current `full_table` numbers, a
"Profiling" section, and the daemon's numbers in the VM.
Measured in the Linux VM (8 vCPUs) with the synthetic table of 1.23
million prefixes: one neighbor's table is in the routing table after
0.7 s and in the kernel after 2.0 s (before: 3.9 s); four neighbors'
4.9 million routes are in the table after 1.1 s and the kernel is
synced after 3.0 s; 520 MB resident with one table, 680 MB with four.
Without the kernel one session takes in 2.0 million routes per second
on one core. A profile also attributed 14% of the session's time to
`Journal::tidy`; inlining its early return changed nothing in an A/B
run of the benchmark, so that was a sampling artefact and is left as it
is.
Testing: a unit test checks the counts against a scan of the entries
through adopt, best, reset, synced, release, withdrawal, refusal and
clear; the kernel test suite and the workspace tests pass; the script
was run with one and four neighbors, with and without the kernel.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>
A full table from several neighbors means millions of small, long-lived
allocations that are replaced as routes change. jemalloc keeps the
resident size of such a workload closer to what is in use than the
system allocator does, glibc's in particular, and does not depend on
the C library the binary is linked with. Not on MSVC, which jemalloc
does not support.
Building now needs a C compiler and make; the installation page says
so.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Rhai made a decision about a route cost one to three microseconds,
some two hundred times what the same costs in Rust. That was bearable
where a function is asked once for an UPDATE, and is not where every
route is weighed against every peer, as it is when routes are passed
on. What is wanted of a policy (mark routes by where they came from,
mark what is announced, let communities say who is told what) needs no
language; it is to be configuration, done natively.
Kept from that work: route selection goes by a LOCAL_PREF that policy
set on a route from an external peer, and the lab's configuration can
be added to by a phase.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>
A new crate, bgp-policy, runs functions of a script on routes: on their
way in, after the general checks of a peer's import and before the
checks that can change (RPKI, next hop reachability); and on their way
out to a peer. A function is given the route and the peer, may refuse
the route, and may change its communities, large communities,
LOCAL_PREF and MED, and on the way out prepend our AS:
fn from_peer(route, peer) {
if route.has_community("65535:666") { return false; }
route.add_community(LEARNED_FROM[peer.role]);
route.local_pref = PREFERENCE[peer.role];
true
}
Configuration: policy { path | source, import_function, export_function }
and, for a peer, import { function } and export { function }. The script
is compiled at startup; `bgp --check` reads it and says which function
is whose. A function that fails on a route has refused it. Scripts have
no files, network or clock, and are stopped after 200,000 steps.
Route selection now goes by a LOCAL_PREF on a route from an external
peer: the decoder never lets a peer's own through, so one that is there
was set by policy.
What it costs was measured before it was built on (benches/policy.rs):
a call that tests a few communities and changes two takes 1 to 3
microseconds, some two hundred times what Rust would. So a function is
asked once for the routes of an UPDATE, which share their attributes,
unless it asks for the prefix. One peer sending 1.23 M routes over a
session: 0.37 s without a function, 0.80 s with one that marks and
ranks every route, 3.4 s if it also looks at the prefix.
Export applies to what is announced, which today is what the daemon
originates; learned routes are not passed on yet.
Tested by unit tests of the crate, sessions end to end, a fuzz target on
the example script (testdata/policy.rhai), and a lab phase in which a
script changes which of FRR's and BIRD's route is chosen and what each
of them is told.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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>
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>
The first part of RPKI origin validation (RFC 6811): the data and how it
gets here. Nothing uses it yet.
VrpTable holds the validated ROA payloads and says whether a route is
valid, invalid or not found. It is a binary trie in one allocation with
a short cut past the first sixteen levels; a lookup against 600,000
entries takes about 40 ns for random addresses. A table is built once
and not changed: when the data changes another takes its place.
rtr is the RPKI-to-Router protocol's PDUs (RFC 8210, and version 0 of
RFC 6810), as bytes and back, without I/O. Lengths are checked from the
header, before the rest of a PDU is waited for.
The client keeps the table in step with a validator's cache. It asks
for everything once and then for changes, when the cache notifies and
at the refresh interval. An answer takes effect only when it is complete
and consistent. Each update says which VRPs came or went, so that only
the routes they cover need looking at again. A cache that fails is
retried and the next one tried; the data is used meanwhile, and dropped
if no cache confirms it within the expire interval. A cache that speaks
only version 0 is spoken to in version 0.
Tests: the cases of RFC 6811, a property test of the trie against the
plain definition, round-trip and hostile-input properties for the
codec, a fuzz target, and the client against a scripted cache.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The work of the speaker-cleanup branch as one commit; the branch keeps
the step-by-step history.
Sessions
- The state machine is a pure function from events to actions, driven by
one task per connection. Idle, Connect and Active belong to a dialer
that keeps configured peers up with backoff.
- Capabilities are negotiated: address families, four-octet AS numbers
with AS_TRANS and AS4_PATH, route refresh, ADD-PATH per family and
direction.
- Collision detection per RFC 4271 section 6.8, by address and
identifier.
- Connections are taken only from configured peers, a few per address.
- A panic in a session is contained and answered with a Cease; a core
task that stops shuts the server down with a Cease to every peer.
- Writes that make no progress are given up (RFC 9687).
Codec
- Malformed UPDATEs are handled as RFC 7606 says: treat-as-withdraw,
attribute discard, or session reset, with the NOTIFICATION to send.
- Address families are open types; any can be named and ignored.
- Prefixes are fixed-size values, normalised, with path identifiers.
- Lengths are filled in after writing; one definition of each type code.
- Property tests and fuzz targets for every decoder.
Routing table
- Adj-RIBs-In and Loc-RIB in one sharded table that sessions write to
directly. Routes are sixteen bytes; attribute sets are interned in
wire form. Best-path selection per RFC 4271 section 9.1.2.2 with
deterministic MED.
- A journal per shard lets followers read changes at their own pace;
one that falls behind is resynchronised.
- On a RIPE RIS dump of 148 peers and 39.3M routes: loaded in 2.0 s on
12 cores, about 52 bytes a route.
Announcing
- Originated routes come from the configuration. Each session has its
own exporter with an Adj-RIB-Out, so a slow peer delays only itself.
- Routes to a peer in our own AS have an empty path and a LOCAL_PREF.
Operations
- HTTP status page, JSON API, event stream and Prometheus metrics.
- Benchmarks on synthetic and real tables.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- Implement passive-side BGP FSM (OpenSent → OpenConfirm → Established)
with hold timer, keepalive timer, and NOTIFICATION on expiry
- Add bgp-server crate: config validation, TCP listener accept loop
(BgpServerBuilder → BgpServer), connection dispatch
- Add bgp-rib crate: Adj-RIB-In actor owning route state with event
broadcast for streaming consumers and snapshot for introspection
- Wire Adj-RIB-In into FSM: announce/withdraw on UPDATE for both legacy
IPv4 NLRI fields and MP_REACH/MP_UNREACH path attributes
- Add bgp-integration-tests crate with 15 end-to-end tests covering
session establishment, timers, UPDATE handling, and RIB introspection
- Fix require_empty! macro bug in open.rs (checked wrong buffer)
- Fix FourByteAsn capability parser returning consumed buffer as remainder
- Fix tracing subscriber not being installed in TracingArgs::install
- Expand docs/RFCs.md with full implementation status across 15 RFCs
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
