How to configure Incus as a BGP server - Incus documentation
Description: BGP is a protocol that allows exchanging routing information between autonomous systems. If you want to directly route external addresses to specific Incus servers or instances, you can configure I...

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# How to configure Incus as a BGP server

Note

The BGP server feature is available for the Bridge network and the Physical network.

BGP is a protocol that allows exchanging routing information between autonomous systems.

If you want to directly route external addresses to specific Incus servers or instances, you can configure Incus as a BGP server. Incus will then act as a BGP peer and advertise relevant routes and next hops to external routers, for example, your network router. It automatically establishes sessions with upstream BGP routers and announces the addresses and subnets that it’s using.

The BGP server feature can be used to allow an Incus server or cluster to directly use internal/external address space by getting the specific subnets or addresses routed to the correct host. This way, traffic can be forwarded to the target instance.

For bridge networks, the following addresses and networks are being advertised:

- Network `ipv4.address` or `ipv6.address` subnets (if the matching `nat` property isn’t set to `true`)

- Network `ipv4.nat.address` or `ipv6.nat.address` subnets (if the matching `nat` property is set to `true`)

- Network forward addresses

- Addresses or subnets specified in `ipv4.routes.external` or `ipv6.routes.external` on an instance NIC that is connected to the bridge network

- Individual instance addresses (a `/32` for IPv4 and a `/128` for IPv6) when `bgp.ipv4.instances` or `bgp.ipv6.instances` is enabled on the network

Make sure to add your subnets to the respective configuration options. Otherwise, they won’t be advertised.

For physical networks, no addresses are advertised directly at the level of the physical network. Instead, the networks, forwards and routes of all downstream networks (the networks that specify the physical network as their uplink network through the `network` option) are advertised in the same way as for bridge networks.

Note

At this time, it is not possible to announce only some specific routes/addresses to particular peers. If you need this, filter prefixes on the upstream routers.

## Configure the BGP server

To configure Incus as a BGP server, set the following server configuration options on all cluster members:

- `core.bgp_address` - the IP address for the BGP server

- `core.bgp_asn` - the ASN for the local server

- `core.bgp_routerid` - the unique identifier for the BGP server

For example, set the following values:

    incus config set core.bgp_address=192.0.2.50:179
    incus config set core.bgp_asn=65536
    incus config set core.bgp_routerid=192.0.2.50

Once these configuration options are set, Incus starts listening for BGP sessions.

### Configure next-hop (`bridge` only)

For bridge networks, you can override the next-hop configuration. By default, the next-hop is set to the address used for the BGP session.

To configure a different address, set `bgp.ipv4.nexthop` or `bgp.ipv6.nexthop`.

### Advertise individual instance addresses (`bridge` only)

By default, a bridge network only advertises its own subnets (or NAT addresses). If you instead want to advertise a route for each individual instance address (for example to route a shared subnet to the specific server that currently runs an instance), enable `bgp.ipv4.instances` and/or `bgp.ipv6.instances` on the network.

When enabled, Incus advertises a `/32` (IPv4) or `/128` (IPv6) route for each running instance connected to the network and withdraws it when the instance stops:

- If the instance NIC has a static `ipv4.address` or `ipv6.address` set, that address is advertised as soon as the instance starts.

- Otherwise, Incus looks up the dynamically allocated addresses (DHCPv4, DHCPv6 or SLAAC) tied to the NIC’s MAC address in the kernel neighbor table for a short period after the instance starts. This requires the instance to generate some network traffic shortly after booting so that its address becomes visible.

    incus network set incusbr0 bgp.ipv4.instances=true
    incus network set incusbr0 bgp.ipv6.instances=true

### Configure BGP peers for OVN networks

If you run an OVN network with an uplink network (`physical` or `bridge`), the uplink network is the one that holds the list of allowed subnets and the BGP configuration. Therefore, you must configure BGP peers on the uplink network that contain the information that is required to connect to the BGP server.

Set the following configuration options on the uplink network:

- `bgp.peers.<name>.address` - the peer address to be used by the downstream networks

- `bgp.peers.<name>.interface` - the interface to use for BGP unnumbered peering (alternative to the peer address)

- `bgp.peers.<name>.asn` - the ASN for the local server

- `bgp.peers.<name>.password` - an optional password for the peer session

- `bgp.peers.<name>.holdtime` - an optional hold time for the peer session (in seconds)

### Use BGP unnumbered

Instead of configuring a peer address, you can set `bgp.peers.<name>.interface` to establish the session using BGP unnumbered. In that mode, the peer’s IPv6 link-local address is automatically discovered on the given interface and used for the session, with IPv4 routes exchanged over it using the extended next-hop capability.

This removes the need to assign a global address to each host for BGP peering, which is particularly useful in larger clusters. It requires the upstream router to also support BGP unnumbered and to be directly connected on that interface.

Once the uplink network is configured, downstream OVN networks will get their external subnets and addresses announced over BGP. The next-hop is set to the address of the OVN router on the uplink network.