Lab

Advanced BGP Features

Tune and secure Cilium BGP, then add Route Import and BFD with INK.

Connect Cilium to an emulated data-center fabric. Use Cilium OSS to tune timers, authenticate a peer, advertise an interface address, and control route attributes. Then use Isovalent Networking for Kubernetes (INK) for Route Import and BFD.

• 🚀 The Lab Environment

  Explore the Cilium node and its emulated routing fabric.

• ⏱️ Establish a BGP session and tune its timers

  Connect Cilium to the ToR and choose practical failure-detection timers.

• 🔐 Authenticate the BGP peer

  Require the same BGP MD5 password on Cilium and the ToR.

• 📡 Advertise one interface address

  Publish one selected node-local address as an exact host route.

• 🚦 Cilium BGP Communities

  Attach routing metadata to Cilium's advertised Pod CIDR.

• 🛣️ Configure eBGP multihop

  Allow the BGP session to cross more than one routed hop.

• 🔄 Preserve routes during a planned restart

  Advertise the BGP Graceful Restart capability to the ToR.

• 🎯 Control which fabric routes the node imports

  Move to INK and admit only an approved route.

• 📍 Detect forwarding failures with BFD

  Add subsecond path detection to the INK BGP peer.

• 🥋 Exam Challenge

  Take the final challenge!