Announce your prefix on Vultr, from your own ASN.
Vultr takes a rather different approach from the big cloud BYOIP programs, and it is worth taking a moment to understand that difference before you begin. There is no provisioning API here that takes over your prefix on your behalf. What Vultr gives you instead is a real BGP session to your instance. You run the routing daemon yourself, the announcement is originated from your own ASN, and Vultr carries it upstream from there. It is this arrangement that gives you so much more control than the cloud flows do, but it also means that there is nobody standing between your configuration and the internet to catch your mistakes for you. We have laid out the full path below.
Prerequisites
Unlike the AWS, Google Cloud and Azure flows that are described elsewhere in this knowledge base, Vultr does not originate your prefix for you, and that means you will need your own ASN in addition to the address space itself. If you happen to have neither at the moment, that is not a problem at all. Prefixx can supply both halves of the equation. You can lease a vetted IPv4 block from us, or buy one on the marketplace, and in either case the LOA, ROA and IRR support that Vultr's review process requires is provided by us as part of the arrangement. And if an ASN still needs to be registered for your organization, we have guided clients through that particular RIR process many times over the years, and we would be happy to do the same for you.
From LOA to Established.
Below is the flow as we walk clients through it. For the current request forms and the daemon guides for your particular operating system, it is best to follow Vultr's official BGP documentation alongside this page.
- Secure the block and ASN. Everything begins with a /24 or larger, plus an ASN that is registered to your organization. Prefixx supplies vetted space, bought or leased as you prefer, and we supply it together with the paperwork that Vultr is going to ask you for a little later in the process.
- Publish the authorization records. Next, an RPKI ROA should be created naming your ASN as the origin, along with matching IRR route objects. This step matters rather more than it might appear at first glance, because Vultr and its peers filter on these records, and an announcement that does not match them will simply fail to propagate.
- Request BGP on your Vultr account. Submit Vultr's BGP request form from within your account, providing your ASN, the prefix and the LOA. The request is then reviewed by Vultr and, once they are satisfied with everything, BGP is enabled for the account.
- Configure the session. Vultr peers with your instance from its private-side ASN (AS64515), while the transit itself is carried by Vultr's network, AS20473. On your side of things, BIRD or FRR is configured to announce your prefix, and your service addresses are bound to a loopback interface.
- Verify. Finally, confirm that the session shows as Established, keep an eye out for your prefix in the public looking glasses, and make sure that RPKI validity comes back as valid for your origin ASN. It is only at that point that we would consider a deployment finished.
We arm you for Vultr's review.
In our experience, it is the paperwork that Vultr's BGP approval stands or falls on: a legitimate LOA, a ROA that matches your origin ASN, and IRR objects that pass the peer filters. We have seen requests stalled for days by a single mismatched route object, so this is not an area where improvising serves you well. What Prefixx offers is the block itself and the full document set behind it, that is to say the LOA issued, the ROA published and the route objects registered, so that the review can clear without the usual back-and-forth. Purchases are secured through escrow, and the white-glove treatment is applied in either case.
Compare the handled-for-you route
Not everyone wants to spend their evenings watching a routing daemon and refreshing looking glasses, and that is fair enough. The same block deploys just as well onto Netrouting bare metal, where BYOIP is natively included: the announcement, the ROA and the IRR work are all handled for you by the Prefixx team, and BYOASN is supported as well.
Netrouting BYOIP guide →Vultr BGP: common questions
Vultr offers BGP as a feature of your account, and beyond that you simply pay for your instances as you normally would. We would suggest checking Vultr's own site for their current terms. Your other costs are the block and the ASN. Prefixx leases IPv4 space with the LOA and ROA support included in the arrangement, or we can broker a purchase for you with zero buyer fees, since it is the seller who pays our 3-8% commission.
Usually it is a matter of days rather than weeks, which makes this one of the quicker paths covered in this knowledge base. The longest part is generally the review of your BGP request and LOA by Vultr's team. ROA and IRR propagation take up to about 24 hours, and the BIRD or FRR configuration itself is perhaps an afternoon of work for someone who is comfortable with routing daemons. When the block is supplied by Prefixx, the LOA and the authorization records are ready on the very day your lease or transfer completes, so nothing on our side is ever what holds up the clock.
Yes, and in fact this model is the most portable one of all the flows we document here. Because the prefix is originated by your own ASN, moving away simply means tearing down one BGP session and bringing it up somewhere else, be that another BGP-capable host, your own rack, or Netrouting bare metal with BYOIP included. There is no re-IP involved and no renumbering either, and whatever reputation you have built up follows the block wherever it happens to go.
Block, LOA, ROA. One conversation.
Just tell us your ASN and the size you need. We will have the space ready, and the paperwork Vultr wants ready along with it.
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