A small BGP lab in Docker

This repository allows you to fire up four autonomous systems and two clients with a single call to docker-compose up.

We use BIRD 2 on Alpine Linux.

Network toplogy

Running

Since docker-compose has problems with IPv6, you need to first create three networks manually:

docker network create --subnet 2001:db8:bb:1::/64 --ipv6 backbone-v6
docker network create --subnet 2001:db8:69:1::/64 --ipv6 test-net-v6-1
docker network create --subnet 2001:db8:69:2::/64 --ipv6 test-net-v6-2

Now, you can build the images:

docker-compose build

And then launch the network:

docker-compose up

Experiments

End to end pinging

docker-compose exec client1 ping 10.69.2.11

Trace route

docker-compose exec client1 traceroute -n 10.69.2.11

Routing table

Display the routing table:

docker-compose exec router1 birdc show route

Failover

Fire up two trace routes:

docker-compose exec client1 mtr -n 10.69.2.11
docker-compose exec client2 mtr -n 10.69.1.11

Log in to router2 or router4 and start disconnecting:

docker-compose exec router2 birdc
disable bgp1
disable bgp2
disable bgp3
disable bgp4

Watch how the route changes.

If you now take down the other router, packets will drop.

If you enable the first router again, transport will resume.

To be done

I could not get IPv6 forwarding to work inside of Docker containers, so you can see how the 2001:db:69:x:: routes propagate but not ping them.

Author

Created by Leah Neukirchen as a Mayflower Mayday project on 2020-01-10.

To the extent possible under law, the creator of this work has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to this work.

http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/