Howto use public route servers for BGP ping and traceroute
What do you do when you need to find out a BGP route from a provider or need to ping or traceroute back to your location for troubleshooting? well the simple answer is to use a free and public route server. It is a little known fact that many major ISP’s all over the world provide public access to a route server sitting on their network with all BGP routes and basic traceroute and ping utilities. How do you access the route servers and where to find a public route server? We will explain in this short but effective howto. Note that most route servers are Cisco IOS based.
Finding a public route server:
Generally its not that easy to find a public route server just by going to the ISP’s website, There is always a google search that may turn a few up but the best way we have found is to use a route server directory usually compiled by other technicians or organizations. We know and use 2 good route server directories available for free on the internet.
http://www.netdigix.com/servers.html
http://www.nanog.org/lookingglass.html
How to connect to a route server?
Generally you will use telnet with the CMD window or hyperterminal in windows or a terminal window in MAC or Linux. Most route servers have links that you can click on that will automatically open your telnet client. if not you can try the following:
In Windows:
Open a CMD window –> Start –> Run –> cmd
Type: telnet <ipaddress or hostname of route server>
In Mac and Linux:
Open a terminal window
Type: telnet <ipaddress or hostname of route server>
What to do after connecting to a public route server?
you can do many commands once you are on a route server, the important ones you probably want to do are: show bgp routes, traceroute and ping. When you get on a traceroute server you can type the ? key to get a list of the possible commands, Normally when you log onto a route server there is a banner that tells you the other available public route servers that this ISP may have.
Example Banner:
Route-server.western.allstream.com Vancouver, BC, Canada
Route-server.central.allstream.com Toronto, ON, Canada
Route-server.eastern.allstream.com Montreal, QC, Canada
Example commands:
route-views.ab> ping xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
route-views.ab> traceroute xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
route-views.ab> ?
Showing BGP routes and AS’s:
route-views.ab> show ip bgp
Article written by MyComputerAid.com
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