Re: FRR for BGP route reflectors?

[Tom Samplonius via NANOG <nanog () lists nanog org>]

  Well, while I’m curious about FRR specific characteristics, I think the typical BGP CPU advice still applies:


1. Fastest possible cores.  While there are techniques to process BGP in parallel (ex. sharding), BGP often tends to 
serialize updates.  Faster cores are always better for BGP.


2. Virtualization is just a tax.  Assume it takes 10% of your performance, which is probably on the high-end for a RR.  
RRs don’t forward packets, so XDP and DPDK and all that stuff, do not apply.



  Juniper says their container routing protocol daemon (cRPD):

Junos cRPD is designed to maximize routing performance. For example, it is capable of reflecting 10 copies of Internet 
routes to 1000 BGP peers in less than 60 seconds.



  I’m curious if FRR can do that, and what hardware that would be.



Tom



> On Jun 2, 2026, at 7:30 AM, Owens, Richard A. via NANOG <nanog () lists nanog org> wrote:
>
> I have had this question also before. Also importantly, if you would, what kind of hardware specs do your RR's have 
> and are they physical or virtual?
>
>
> ---
>
> Richard Owens
>
> Network Automation and Wireless Engineer | Information Technology Services
>
> Old Dominion University
>
> 4300 Engineering and Computational Sciences Building
>
>
>
> https://www.odu.edu/its
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: fritz--- via NANOG <nanog () lists nanog org>
> Sent: Tuesday, June 2, 2026 10:09
> To: nanog () lists nanog org <nanog () lists nanog org>
> Cc: fritz () init7 net <fritz () init7 net>
> Subject: Re: FRR for BGP route reflectors?
>
> EXTERNAL to ODU: This email is not from an ODU account. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize 
> the sender and know the content is safe.
>
> Hi Tom!
>
> We are using FRRouting on Linux VMs as dedicated BGP route reflectors for AFs vpnv4, vpnv6 and evpn.
> Having around 1000 RR clients connected with a handful of L3VPN and a few dozen EVPN instances.
> We don't keep the full routing table on them, but that should cause no problem, just throw a bit more memory onto the 
> VMs.
> BGP works like a charm on FRRouting and is also pretty good on supporting recent BGP features.
> We can absolutely recommend it.
>
> As a sidenote: IGPs at FRRouting seem to get a bit less love, so don't be too sophisticated there...
>
> BR,
> Thomas
> Senior Network Engineer
> Init7 (AS13030)
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