👋 Hello!

This week, the bgp.rodeo network got connected to Fusix! Fusix is a transit provider in the Netherlands, providing high-quaility transit services in a very wide range of POPs. They have an excellent network (and a trackrecord to prove it!) to make sure that their customers are always connected. Fusix made sure my network got connected and even did the patch work. Thanks again! Here’s to many happy packets finding their way to their destinations. ...

This is the new home, and name, of AS202585, previously known as bouwhuis.network. AS202585 is a small network with the most presence in the Netherlands. You can learn more about my network on the about page. With a new name and website, I aim to share progress and updates about my network using the blog. As well as provide up-to-date infomration. Let’s see how long I can keep it going for … ...

My network runs on the BIRD router software. Since I run Debian, the sofware is just an apt install bird away. At the time it seemed like a natural choice. I wanted to get familiar with it and there was already some excellent automation options. When you do that apt install bird, you get BIRD 1.6. Last year, the team behind BIRD announced that BIRD 1.6 would be End-of-life by Dec 31, 2023. Time for an upgrade! ...

(note: this post is antedated to form a proper timeline of the developments of my network, it was actually written in march of 2024) I finally decided it was time to add a second switch. For multiple reasons: I was running out of 10G ports, één is geen and I found out it could easily fit into the same U. Yes, that’s right. My Mikrotik CRS310-1G-5S-4S+IN is only 200 mm wide (that’s 7.87402’’ in freedom units). Which means that you can easiliy fit one next to it and have room to spare. ...

(note: this post is antedated to form a proper timeline of the developments of my network, it was actually written in march of 2024) A network is no fun without traffic, right? It’s like the blood flowing through the veins. Although its more like the flashes of light blinking through the fibers. I already run some Tor relays, but I wanted to see if I could do more. And hosting a mirror is one of the things I came up with. It can help the open-source community while providing users of the mirror with a fast way to grab the packeges or ISOs they need. ...

and beyond! (note: this post is antedated to form a proper timeline of the developments of my network, it was actually written in march of 2024) In my “How it started” post, I talked about the Coloclue Nikhef port service. It’s a great service provided by Coloclue in cooperation with Fusix. It has one small disadvantage though, and that is that the speed is limited to 1 gigabit. While 1 gigabit was plenty fast at the time, I could see how I could go over that while downloading files from my network, doing speedtests or simply by growth of hosted services. ...

and i’m not sure if I would do it again. (note: this post is antedated to form a proper timeline of the developments of my network, it was actually written in march of 2024) Why run a Tor node in the first place? Right after I started with my network, I started running Tor nodes. I have been doing it on-and-off in the past, but this was a chance to get full control over the infrastructure the node was running on and have the traffic it generates be useful to me. ...

(note: this post is antedated to form a proper timeline of the developments of my network, it was actually written in march of 2024) I started my network at the tail end of 2022. At that time, I had my machine hosted in one of the datacenters of [Coloclue][https;//coloclue.net]. They offered a service called ‘Nikhef port’, which is (almost) exactly what it sounds like. You get a physical port in Nikhef, accessable to your machine via a VLAN. ...