RE: BGP Route Monitoring

[Michael Hare via NANOG <nanog () nanog org>]

Re: Adam's advice about IOS/XR SNMP access to VRF, while this experience may be a bit dated [IOS XR 5.x], in production 
we have used "snmp-server community-map $x context $y".  I will say we weren't pleased, we noticed that context 
switches didn't work well.  For example if our poller tried to simultaneously poll the global community and the vrf 
community at the same time, the results were non deterministic.  Maybe this has been improved in later versions, or if 
you always have a single poller that will always be sequential, you may never see this.

Although more work BMP is probably the better/safer approach.

-Michael

From: NANOG <nanog-bounces+michael.hare=wisc.edu () nanog org> On Behalf Of Adam Thompson
Sent: Thursday, January 6, 2022 12:41 PM
To: Sandoiu Mihai <Mihai.Sandoiu () wwz ch>; nanog () nanog org
Subject: RE: BGP Route Monitoring

Most monitoring products allow you to monitor custom SNMP OIDs, and your entire BGP RIB is - usually - exposed via SNMP.
Most monitoring products also treat "missing" OIDs specially, and can alert on that fact.
At least, that's how I would start doing it.
We use Observium here, and it can do what you want, albeit with a little bit of futzing around in the Custom OID and 
Alerts sections.

Cisco does weird things with getting SNMP data from VRFs, though, so... YMMV.  I know there used to be a 
Cisco-proprietary way to select which VRF you were polling common OIDs from, but don't remember the details.
-Adam

Adam Thompson
Consultant, Infrastructure Services
[MERLIN]
100 - 135 Innovation Drive
Winnipeg, MB, R3T 6A8
(204) 977-6824 or 1-800-430-6404 (MB only)
athompson () merlin mb ca<mailto:athompson () merlin mb ca>
www.merlin.mb.ca<http://www.merlin.mb.ca/>

From: NANOG <nanog-bounces+athompson=merlin.mb.ca () nanog org<mailto:nanog-bounces+athompson=merlin.mb.ca () nanog 
org>> On Behalf Of Sandoiu Mihai
Sent: Thursday, January 6, 2022 4:35 AM
To: nanog () nanog org<mailto:nanog () nanog org>
Subject: BGP Route Monitoring

Hi

I am looking for a route monitoring product that does the following:
-checks if a specific bgp route from a specific neighbor is present the BGP table (in some vrf, not necessarily 
internet routed vrf) of an ASR9K running IOS XR
-sends a syslog message or an alarm if the route goes missing

The use case is the following: we are receiving same routes over 2 or more bgp peerings, due to best route we cannot 
really see at the moment if one of the routes ceased to be received over a certain peering.

Alternative approach: a product that measures the number of bgp received prefixes from a certain peer.

Do you know of such product that is readily available and does not require ssh sessions to the routers and parsing the 
outputs?
I am trying to find a solution that does not require much scripting or customization.

Many thanks.

Regards
Mihai