Re: Publishing BGP communties for your network (Re: What's up with BGP communities?)

[Callahan Warlick via NANOG <nanog () lists nanog org>]

> an entire YANG model for these is not especially
beneficial

Having some structure for specific usecases of bgp communities might be
useful- e.g. geo-based origin communities. This could be accomplished in a
way similar to what was done for ip geolocation via rfc8805- which I've
found is very useful for maintaining these datasets over time from known
publishers.

For more varied or generic community usecases, I totally agree that a
unified model might be more difficult and less beneficial.

On Mon, Jan 26, 2026 at 1:52 PM Tom Beecher via NANOG <nanog () lists nanog org>
wrote:

> > And for LGs the above repo has them all :) Only other source is
> > https://bgp.tools <https://bgp.tools/> which has sometimes more details
> > on some networks when folks have entered them manually there.
>
>
> BGP.Tools is not the only source. onestep.net used to be the defacto
> source
> that collated most of these.
>
> I agree though that an entire YANG model for these is not especially
> beneficial. We store communities in a similar way, text file that is human
> readable but also parseable to translate when needed.
>
> I could see a use case for this to detect WHEN an AS's published
> communities **CHANGED** without having to go look for that, but with as
> infrequently as most do it's kinda meh.
>
> On Mon, Jan 26, 2026 at 11:36 AM Jeroen Massar via NANOG <
> nanog () lists nanog org> wrote:
>
> > > On 25 Jan 2026, at 18:31, Martin Pels via NANOG <nanog () lists nanog org
> >
> > wrote:
> > > [..]
> https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-grow-yang-bgp-communities/
> > > Using the model described here, networks can publish a JSON file with
> > descriptions for the communities they use for their Autonomous System.
> >
> > I thought everybody just added a simple text file to:
> >  https://github.com/NLNOG/lg.ring.nlnog.net/tree/main/communities
> > and called it a day? That file format is simple, succint and readable by
> > humans.
> >
> > Is the intent of that YANG document to let a computer parse it and do
> > automatic setting of action communities? Or is it just to see what the
> > label is?
> >
> >
> > For my own looking glass what I do is I parse the above directory and
> > translate it to a little lookup array. The two YANG ones from RIPE I
> parse
> > in a similar way, similar to what the NLNOG LG does, all the YANG markup
> is
> > just tossed though.
> >
> >
> > But in the end, for most purposes it is to turn the numbers into a label
> > so that one can see what the community means. And unless it is an action
> > policy, no computer will be acting upon those communities as one has to
> > understand the full intent (and no, an LLM will not get that yet, and
> > please do not let a LLM close to BGP :) )
> >
> > Thus they should be good for humans setting an action community or
> viewing
> > what the community means.
> >
> > Any other purposes and thus reason why to make it more complex than that?
> >
> >
> > A WHOIS/RPSL way of being able to indicate where one stores their
> > community.txt file for easy discovery would be cool though. Though that
> is
> > likely something https://www.peeringdb.com <https://www.peeringdb.com/>
> > could do and then it is solved too.
> >
> > And for LGs the above repo has them all :) Only other source is
> > https://bgp.tools <https://bgp.tools/> which has sometimes more details
> > on some networks when folks have entered them manually there.
> >
> > Regards,
> >  Jeroen
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > NANOG mailing list
> https://lists.nanog.org/archives/list/nanog () lists nanog org/message/D727FQQXYPR3KVC4EAENVAXGVE5JC4O7/
> >
> _______________________________________________
> NANOG mailing list
>
> https://lists.nanog.org/archives/list/nanog () lists nanog org/message/RN2G5OVZLP7SHCOHAFW4X35HFAIGNSOT/
_______________________________________________
NANOG mailing list 
https://lists.nanog.org/archives/list/nanog () lists nanog org/message/42JMOOJSYFOLFIKFTUQZO7XTMZFL2OPQ/