Configuring BGP on Vultr With OpenBSD

3 min readUpdated 31 January 2025

Vultr's BGP feature allows you to bring your own IP space and use it across any of our locations, with an OpenBSD instance no additional software is needed!

Getting started

In order to use BGP, you would need your own IP space (either v4 or v6). If you have your own ASN, you can use that or we can assign a private one.

Open a ticket with the following information:

Your IP ranges
Your ASN (if you have one)

Once BGP has been configured on your account, you can proceed with configuring BGP.

Our examples are going to use the following:

ASN: 64512
Instance's IPv4 address: 203.0.113.123
Instance's IPv6 address: 2001:DB8:1000::1/64
IPv4 Block: 198.51.100.0/24
IPv6 Block: 2001:0db8::/32
BGP Password: hunter2

BGP Setup

OpenBSD ships with bgpd(8) already installed and only requires a few configuration file changes to start.

Edit rc.conf.local(8) to add the following line to allow the bgpd(8) daemon to start via rc.d(8)

bgpd_flags=

A complete example of bgpd.conf(8) can be found at /etc/examples/bgpd.conf and contains lots of extra configuration options you may need.

Adjust the example configuration below as required and write to /etc/bgpd.conf (ensure that the permissions for this file are 600)

   AS 64512
    router-id 203.0.113.123

    listen on 127.0.0.1
    listen on ::1
    log updates
    network 198.51.100.0/24
    network 2001:0db8::/32

    neighbor 169.254.169.254 {
            remote-as               64515
            descr                   "Vultr IPv4"
            announce IPv4           unicast
            announce IPv6           none
            tcp md5sig password     hunter2
            multihop                2
            local-address           203.0.113.123
    }
    neighbor 2001:19f0:ffff::1 {
            remote-as               64515
            descr                   "Vultr IPv6"
            announce IPv4           none
            announce IPv6           unicast
            tcp md5sig password     hunter2
            multihop                2
            local-address           2001:DB8:1000::1
    }

To make sure everything is in order, you can issue the command bgpd -f /etc/bgpd.conf -n. If bgpd(ok) is returned, you can start the daemon.

# rcctl enable bgpd
# rcctl start bgpd
bgpd(ok)

To check the status of your BGP sessions, you will need to use bgpctl(8). For example, to see a basic overview you can use bgpctl show summary

# bgpctl show summary
Neighbor                   AS    MsgRcvd    MsgSent  OutQ Up/Down  State/PrfRcvd
Vultr IPv6              64515        230        207     0 01:41:40      0
Vultr IPv4              64515        244        220     0 01:48:09      0

To see detailed information about a BPG neighbor use bgpctl show neighbor

BGP neighbor is 2001:19f0:ffff::1, remote AS 64515, Multihop (2)
 Description: Vultr IPv6
  BGP version 4, remote router-id 45.63.102.186, using md5sig
  BGP state = Established, up for 01:46:45
  Last read 00:00:08, holdtime 90s, keepalive interval 30s
  Neighbor capabilities:
    Multiprotocol extensions: IPv6 unicast
    Route Refresh
    Graceful Restart: Timeout: 120, IPv6 unicast
    4-byte AS numbers

  Message statistics:
		  Sent       Received  
  Opens                    1          1
  Notifications            0          0
  Updates                  2          1
  Keepalives             214        240
  Route Refresh            0          0
  Total                  217        242

  Update statistics:
		  Sent       Received  
  Updates                  4          0
  Withdraws                0          0
  End-of-Rib               1          1

  Local host:  2001:DB8:1000::1, Local port:  38298
  Remote host:    2001:19f0:ffff::1, Remote port:   179

BGP neighbor is 169.254.169.254, remote AS 64515, Multihop (2)
 Description: Vultr IPv4
  BGP version 4, remote router-id 45.63.102.186, using md5sig
  BGP state = Established, up for 01:53:14
  Last read 00:00:14, holdtime 90s, keepalive interval 30s
  Neighbor capabilities:
    Multiprotocol extensions: IPv4 unicast
    Route Refresh
    Graceful Restart: Timeout: 120, IPv4 unicast
    4-byte AS numbers

  Message statistics:
		  Sent       Received  
  Opens                    1          1
  Notifications            0          0
  Updates                  2          1
  Keepalives             227        253
  Route Refresh            0          0
  Total                  230        255

  Update statistics:
		  Sent       Received  
  Updates                  4          0
  Withdraws                0          0
  End-of-Rib               1          1

  Local host:         203.0.113.123, Local port:  19824
  Remote host:      169.254.169.254, Remote port:   179

At this point we can start assigning our IP addresses to interfaces (e.g. by configuring /etc/hostname.lo1 ) so applications can be configured to listen on these IPs.

If you intend to use your IP addresses on multiple instances you will need to adjust the network statements on each instance to announce a more specific route for those IPs.

Instance A

   AS 64512
    router-id 203.0.113.123

    listen on 127.0.0.1
    listen on ::1
    log updates
    network 198.51.100.0/24
    network 198.51.100.1/32
    network 2001:0db8::/32
    network 2001:0db8::/64

    neighbor 169.254.169.254 {
            remote-as               64515
            descr                   "Vultr IPv4"
            announce IPv4           unicast
            announce IPv6           none
            tcp md5sig password     hunter2
            multihop                2
            local-address           203.0.113.123
    }
    neighbor 2001:19f0:ffff::1 {
            remote-as               64515
            descr                   "Vultr IPv6"
            announce IPv4           none
            announce IPv6           unicast
            tcp md5sig password     hunter2
            multihop                2
            local-address           2001:DB8:1000::1
    }

Instance B

   AS 64512
    router-id 203.0.113.124

    listen on 127.0.0.1
    listen on ::1
    log updates
    network 198.51.100.0/24
    network 198.51.100.2/32
    network 2001:0db8::/32
    network 2001:0db8:0001::/64

    neighbor 169.254.169.254 {
            remote-as               64515
            descr                   "Vultr IPv4"
            announce IPv4           unicast
            announce IPv6           none
            tcp md5sig password     hunter2
            multihop                2
            local-address           203.0.113.124
    }
    neighbor 2001:19f0:ffff::1 {
            remote-as               64515
            descr                   "Vultr IPv6"
            announce IPv4           none
            announce IPv6           unicast
            tcp md5sig password     hunter2
            multihop                2
            local-address           2001:DB8:1000::2
    }

Note: Do not forget to use a different password from what is referenced in this article.

Tags:OpenBSD Vultr Compute BGP

Configuring BGP on Vultr With OpenBSD

3 min readUpdated 31 January 2025

Vultr's BGP feature allows you to bring your own IP space and use it across any of our locations, with an OpenBSD instance no additional software is needed!

Getting started

In order to use BGP, you would need your own IP space (either v4 or v6). If you have your own ASN, you can use that or we can assign a private one.

Open a ticket with the following information:

Your IP ranges
Your ASN (if you have one)

Once BGP has been configured on your account, you can proceed with configuring BGP.

Our examples are going to use the following:

ASN: 64512
Instance's IPv4 address: 203.0.113.123
Instance's IPv6 address: 2001:DB8:1000::1/64
IPv4 Block: 198.51.100.0/24
IPv6 Block: 2001:0db8::/32
BGP Password: hunter2

BGP Setup

OpenBSD ships with bgpd(8) already installed and only requires a few configuration file changes to start.

Edit rc.conf.local(8) to add the following line to allow the bgpd(8) daemon to start via rc.d(8)

bgpd_flags=

A complete example of bgpd.conf(8) can be found at /etc/examples/bgpd.conf and contains lots of extra configuration options you may need.

Adjust the example configuration below as required and write to /etc/bgpd.conf (ensure that the permissions for this file are 600)

   AS 64512
    router-id 203.0.113.123

    listen on 127.0.0.1
    listen on ::1
    log updates
    network 198.51.100.0/24
    network 2001:0db8::/32

    neighbor 169.254.169.254 {
            remote-as               64515
            descr                   "Vultr IPv4"
            announce IPv4           unicast
            announce IPv6           none
            tcp md5sig password     hunter2
            multihop                2
            local-address           203.0.113.123
    }
    neighbor 2001:19f0:ffff::1 {
            remote-as               64515
            descr                   "Vultr IPv6"
            announce IPv4           none
            announce IPv6           unicast
            tcp md5sig password     hunter2
            multihop                2
            local-address           2001:DB8:1000::1
    }

To make sure everything is in order, you can issue the command bgpd -f /etc/bgpd.conf -n. If bgpd(ok) is returned, you can start the daemon.

# rcctl enable bgpd
# rcctl start bgpd
bgpd(ok)

To check the status of your BGP sessions, you will need to use bgpctl(8). For example, to see a basic overview you can use bgpctl show summary

# bgpctl show summary
Neighbor                   AS    MsgRcvd    MsgSent  OutQ Up/Down  State/PrfRcvd
Vultr IPv6              64515        230        207     0 01:41:40      0
Vultr IPv4              64515        244        220     0 01:48:09      0

To see detailed information about a BPG neighbor use bgpctl show neighbor

BGP neighbor is 2001:19f0:ffff::1, remote AS 64515, Multihop (2)
 Description: Vultr IPv6
  BGP version 4, remote router-id 45.63.102.186, using md5sig
  BGP state = Established, up for 01:46:45
  Last read 00:00:08, holdtime 90s, keepalive interval 30s
  Neighbor capabilities:
    Multiprotocol extensions: IPv6 unicast
    Route Refresh
    Graceful Restart: Timeout: 120, IPv6 unicast
    4-byte AS numbers

  Message statistics:
		  Sent       Received  
  Opens                    1          1
  Notifications            0          0
  Updates                  2          1
  Keepalives             214        240
  Route Refresh            0          0
  Total                  217        242

  Update statistics:
		  Sent       Received  
  Updates                  4          0
  Withdraws                0          0
  End-of-Rib               1          1

  Local host:  2001:DB8:1000::1, Local port:  38298
  Remote host:    2001:19f0:ffff::1, Remote port:   179

BGP neighbor is 169.254.169.254, remote AS 64515, Multihop (2)
 Description: Vultr IPv4
  BGP version 4, remote router-id 45.63.102.186, using md5sig
  BGP state = Established, up for 01:53:14
  Last read 00:00:14, holdtime 90s, keepalive interval 30s
  Neighbor capabilities:
    Multiprotocol extensions: IPv4 unicast
    Route Refresh
    Graceful Restart: Timeout: 120, IPv4 unicast
    4-byte AS numbers

  Message statistics:
		  Sent       Received  
  Opens                    1          1
  Notifications            0          0
  Updates                  2          1
  Keepalives             227        253
  Route Refresh            0          0
  Total                  230        255

  Update statistics:
		  Sent       Received  
  Updates                  4          0
  Withdraws                0          0
  End-of-Rib               1          1

  Local host:         203.0.113.123, Local port:  19824
  Remote host:      169.254.169.254, Remote port:   179

At this point we can start assigning our IP addresses to interfaces (e.g. by configuring /etc/hostname.lo1 ) so applications can be configured to listen on these IPs.

If you intend to use your IP addresses on multiple instances you will need to adjust the network statements on each instance to announce a more specific route for those IPs.

Instance A

   AS 64512
    router-id 203.0.113.123

    listen on 127.0.0.1
    listen on ::1
    log updates
    network 198.51.100.0/24
    network 198.51.100.1/32
    network 2001:0db8::/32
    network 2001:0db8::/64

    neighbor 169.254.169.254 {
            remote-as               64515
            descr                   "Vultr IPv4"
            announce IPv4           unicast
            announce IPv6           none
            tcp md5sig password     hunter2
            multihop                2
            local-address           203.0.113.123
    }
    neighbor 2001:19f0:ffff::1 {
            remote-as               64515
            descr                   "Vultr IPv6"
            announce IPv4           none
            announce IPv6           unicast
            tcp md5sig password     hunter2
            multihop                2
            local-address           2001:DB8:1000::1
    }

Instance B

   AS 64512
    router-id 203.0.113.124

    listen on 127.0.0.1
    listen on ::1
    log updates
    network 198.51.100.0/24
    network 198.51.100.2/32
    network 2001:0db8::/32
    network 2001:0db8:0001::/64

    neighbor 169.254.169.254 {
            remote-as               64515
            descr                   "Vultr IPv4"
            announce IPv4           unicast
            announce IPv6           none
            tcp md5sig password     hunter2
            multihop                2
            local-address           203.0.113.124
    }
    neighbor 2001:19f0:ffff::1 {
            remote-as               64515
            descr                   "Vultr IPv6"
            announce IPv4           none
            announce IPv6           unicast
            tcp md5sig password     hunter2
            multihop                2
            local-address           2001:DB8:1000::2
    }

Note: Do not forget to use a different password from what is referenced in this article.

Tags:OpenBSD Vultr Compute BGP

Configuring BGP on Vultr With OpenBSD

Getting started

BGP Setup

Instance A

Instance B

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0 Comments

Configuring BGP on Vultr With OpenBSD

Getting started

BGP Setup

Instance A

Instance B

More to Explore

Tech Talk: Running a Self-Improving AI Agent with Hermes on Vultr

Tech Talk: Implementing Fine-Grained Access Control with Vultr IAM

Tech Talk: Getting Started with Vultr IAM

Tech Talk: Simplifying Zero-Trust Networking with NetBird on Vultr Marketplace

0 Comments