BGP Anycast Tuner: Intuitive Route Management for Anycast Services

IP anycast has become a vital technology for DNS and CDN operators alike. Yet, while big operators have their tools to monitor and configure anycast routing, most of anycast networks are still configured manually. In this paper, we introduce a new approach to anycast management. Our solution is based on active measurements combined with traffic engineering. We propose the concept of a "BGP Cookbook" that allows operators to forecast the effects of routing policy changes over their services. We also introduce a web-based interface, called "BGP Anycast Tuner", that allows operators to gain insight into their service's performance and provides easy management through automation. We evaluate our approach by implementing a prototype running in a testbed composed of 12 anycast sites covering 5 continents. We demonstrate our tool in two different use cases: discovering and fixing a sub-optimal anycast routing issue, and shifting traffic between continents, which is useful during service disruptions.