Using bird to pull global BGP route counts

For an electronics project I’m working on I wanted a way to check the current global routing table every five minutes for both IPv4 and IPv6. I did not want to log into anyone else’s router or looking glass as checking every 5 minutes may be considered abuse.

So I thought to spin up a bird routing instance. I just wanted to receive the routes, not actually install them into the kernel on my linux box. From there I’d be able to check the table size sent over.

Nat Morris helped me out by sending a full tables over a multihop BGP session.

Installing bird is trivial. In order to ensure I’m only running BGP and not installing into the kernel, my configuration looks pretty simple.

/etc/bird.conf:

log syslog all;

router id x.x.x.x;

protocol device { }

protocol bgp {
        local as xxxxx;
        neighbor x.x.x.x as xxxxx;
        multihop;
        password "xxxxx";
}

/etc/bird6.conf:

log syslog all;

router id x.x.x.x;

protocol device { }

protocol bgp {
        local as xxxxx;
        neighbor x:x:x:x:x::x as xxxxx;
        source address x:x:x:x:x:x::x;
        multihop;
        password "xxxxx";
}

In order to get the figures I need, I’d usually have to log into the console of the daemon like so:

$ birdc
BIRD 1.3.7 ready.
bird> show protocols all bgp1
name     proto    table    state  since       info
bgp1     BGP      master   up     19:06       Established
  Preference:     100
  Input filter:   ACCEPT
  Output filter:  REJECT
  Routes:         511014 imported, 0 exported, 511014 preferred
  Route change stats:     received   rejected   filtered    ignored   accepted
    Import updates:         523721          0          0        826     522895
    Import withdraws:         1313          0        ---          0       1313
    Export updates:         522895     522895          0        ---          0
    Export withdraws:         1313        ---        ---        ---          0
  BGP state:          Established
    Neighbor address: x.x.x.x
    Neighbor AS:      xxxxx
    Neighbor ID:      x.x.x.x
    Neighbor caps:    refresh AS4
    Session:          external multihop AS4
    Source address:   x.x.x.x
    Hold timer:       142/180
    Keepalive timer:  33/60

I could get a script to log in and get the required information via regular expressions, but there has to be an easier way. Turns out you can push a command directly to bird without logging into it first:

$birdc 'show protocols all bgp1'
BIRD 1.3.7 ready.
name     proto    table    state  since       info
bgp1     BGP      master   up     19:06       Established
  Preference:     100
  Input filter:   ACCEPT
  Output filter:  REJECT
  Routes:         511025 imported, 0 exported, 511025 preferred
  Route change stats:     received   rejected   filtered    ignored   accepted
    Import updates:         523924          0          0        839     523085
    Import withdraws:         1329          0        ---          0       1329
    Export updates:         523085     523085          0        ---          0
    Export withdraws:         1329        ---        ---        ---          0
  BGP state:          Established
    Neighbor address: x.x.x.x
    Neighbor AS:      xxxxx
    Neighbor ID:      x.x.x.x.x
    Neighbor caps:    refresh AS4
    Session:          external multihop AS4
    Source address:   x.x.x.x
    Hold timer:       161/180
    Keepalive timer:  24/60

Still too much information, but we can use grep!

$birdc 'show protocols all bgp1' | grep 'Routes'
  Routes:         510977 imported, 0 exported, 510977 preferred

Better, but those fields are nicely tabbed so awk to the rescue! I’d like to get that route count. Easily done.

$birdc 'show protocols all bgp1' | grep 'Routes' | awk {'print $2'}
510976

I can now cron a script that will pull those values once every 5 minutes and generate an XML file which you can see right here.

Feel free to query that page and use it for your own projects. Just be aware there is NO SLA on it :)