A week or two ago I became aware of DN42, a private network run to teach people how to use BGP. DN42 users connect to each other using site-site VPNs and then use BGP to exchange routing information. As someone who learns best from hands-on activity I simply couldn’t resist.
This blog post will discuss getting connected to the DN42 network using a Cisco router, be it physical or in a virtualisation solution such as GNS3/VIRL. At a high level there are three main steps:
- Create a number of “objects” in order to allocate a network address that you advertise in BGP;
- Configure your router so it can access the internet;
- Locate a suitable network to establish a VPN with and then form a BGP adjacency;
I’ll try and cover off the various DN42 specifics, but do not plan on covering basic router configuration tasks.
Continue reading Getting started with DN42