wiki/howto/Getting-started.md

You want to join dn42, but you don't know where to start. This guide gives general guidelines about dn42 and routing in general, but it assumes that you are knowledgeable with routing.

Requirements

• you have at least one router running 24/7. Any Linux or BSD box can be turned into a router. If your home router runs OpenWRT, you might consider using it for dn42.
• your router is able to establish network tunnels over the Internet (Wireguard, GRE, OpenVPN, IPSec, Tinc...). Beware, your network operator might filter this kind of traffic, e.g. in schools or universities.
• you are generally knowledgeable with networking and routing (i.e. you've heard about BGP, IGP, forwarding, and you're willing to configure a BGP router such as Quagga or Bird)

Formalities

Don't worry, it's not as tedious as registering with a RIR ;)

Subscribe to the mailing list

This is important, as it allows to stay up-to-date on best practices, new services, security issues...

See Contact to subscribe.

Fill in the registry

You must create several objects in the DN42 registry: https://git.dn42.us/dn42/registry

The registry is a git repository, so objects are created by forking the main repository, making your changes and then submitting a pull request for review. See the git documentation and guides on github for how to use git to work with remote repositories.

Do browse through the registry and look at the pull request queue to see examples, understand how the process works and see the types of questions asked by the registry maintainers.

Whilst it is possible to use the web interface to edit files, you are encouraged to clone your repo locally and use the command line git tools. It's easy to do and learning how to use git is a skill worth knowing. Using the web interface creates a large number of commits making changes more difficult to track

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This example assumes that your name is <FOO>, part of an organisation called <FOO-ORG> (for instance, your hackerspace). Obviously, these should be replaced by the appropriate values in all examples below.

We will create several types of objects:

• maintainer objects, which are authenticated so that only you can edit your own objects
• person objects, which describe people or organisations and provide contact information
• and resource objects (AS number, IP subnet, DNS zone, etc).

All objects are simple text files in the specific subfolders, but they do have a specific format. The files should use spaces and not tabs, and the attribute values must start on the 20th column.

Create a maintainer object

Create a mntner object in data/mntner/ named <FOO>-MNT. It will be used to edit all the objects that are under your responsibility.

• use <FOO>-MNT as mnt-by, otherwise, you won't be able to edit your maintainer object.
• recommended: add a PGP Fingerprint auth: pgp-fingerprint <pgp-fingerprint> or SSH key auth: ssh-{rsa,ed25519} <key> to prevent unauthenticated changes.

Example: data/mntner/EXAMPLE-MNT

mntner:             EXAMPLE-MNT
admin-c:            EXAMPLE-DN42
tech-c:             EXAMPLE-DN42
mnt-by:             EXAMPLE-MNT
source:             DN42

Create person objects

Create a person object in data/person/ for yourself (not your organisation/hackerspace/whatever).

• use something like <FOO>-DN42 as nic-hdl, it should end with -DN42.
• the person field is more freeform, you may use your nickname or even real name here.
• provide an email.
• you may provide additional ways of contacting you, using one or more contact field. For instance xmpp:luke@theforce.net, irc:luke42@hackint, twitter: TheGreatLuke.
• you may whish to add other fields, such as pgp-fingerprint, remarks, and so on.
• don't forget to set mnt-by to <FOO>-MNT.

Example: data/mntner/EXAMPLE-DN42

person:             John Doe
contact:            john.doe@example.com
nic-hdl:            EXAMPLE-DN42
mnt-by:             EXAMPLE-MNT
source:             DN42

Organisations are not required if you are joining dn42 as a single user. If you intend to register resources for an organisation (e.g. your hackerspace), you must also create an organisation object for your organisation:

• organisation is of the form <ORG-FOO>.
• org-name should be the name of your organisation.
• e-mail should be a contact address for your organisation, or maybe a mailing list (but people should be able to send email without subscribing).
• admin-c, tech-c, and abuse-c may point to person objects responsible for the respective role in your organisation.
• you may provide a website (www field).
• don't forget to set mnt-by to <FOO>-MNT, since you're managing this object on behalf of your organisation.

Example: data/organisation/ORG-EXAMPLE

organisation:       ORG-EXAMPLE
org-name:           Example Organisation
admin-c:            EXAMPLE-DN42
tech-c:             EXAMPLE-DN42
mnt-by:             EXAMPLE-MNT
source:             DN42

Guidelines for future objects

From now on, you should use:

• admin-c: <FOO>-DN42 and tech-c: <FOO>-DN42 for your own resources.
• admin-c: <FOO>-DN42, tech-c: <FOO>-DN42 and org: <ORG-FOO> for the resources of your organisation.
• mnt-by: <FOO>-MNT for all objects, so that you can edit them later.

This applies to AS numbers, network prefixes, routes, DNS records...

Register an AS number

To register an AS number, simply create an aut-num object in data/aut-num/. as-name should be a name for your AS.

Your AS number can be chosen arbitrarily in the dn42 ASN space, look at the as-block objects. The historic ASN space is around 64600-64855 and 76100-76200. Starting from June 2014, you must allocate your AS number in the new 4242420000-4242423999 range.

For a list of currently assigned AS numbers, see http://ix.ucis.nl/dn42/as.php. This list is automatically built from the registry.

If you intend to use an ASN outside of the native dn42 ranges, please check that it doesn't clash with the [Freifunk AS-Numbers] (http://wiki.freifunk.net/AS-Nummern) or other networks (ChaosVPN, etc). For a list of ASN currently announced in dn42, see this map or this list.

If unsure, ask on the mailing list or IRC.

Example: data/aut-num/AS4242423999

aut-num:            AS4242423999
as-name:            AS for EXAMPLE Network
admin-c:            EXAMPLE-DN42
tech-c:             EXAMPLE-DN42
mnt-by:             EXAMPLE-MNT
source:             DN42

Register a network prefix

IPv6

To register an IPv6 prefix, you can create an inet6num object. A single /48 allocation in ULA space will likely provide more than enough room for all devices you will ever connect. Some people use “vanity” prefixes like fd42:xyz::/48 instead of the fully standard-conformant pseudorandom ones but that is strongly discouraged. dn42 is interconnected with other networks like icvpn which use the same range so a registration in the dn42 registry can't prevent conflicts.

A few websites can generate random ULA prefixes for you:

• SimpleDNS
• Ultratools

or a small script is available: ulagen.py

example: data/inet6num/fd42:4992:6a6d::_48

inet6num:           fd42:4992:6a6d:0000:0000:0000:0000:0000 - fd42:4992:6a6d:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff:ffff
cidr:               fd42:4992:6a6d::/48
netname:            EVE-NETWORK
descr:              Network of eve
country:            DE
admin-c:            MIC92-DN42
tech-c:             MIC92-DN42
mnt-by:             MIC92-MNT
status:             ASSIGNED
source:             DN42

IPv4 (Legacy)

If you also want to register an IPv4 network prefix, simply create an inetnum object.

You may choose your network prefix in one of the currently open netblocks. You can get a list of unassigned subnets on the following sites, please mind the allocation guideline below.

• Open Netblocks
• graphical visualisation of the assigned ranges.

Size	Comment
/29	starter pack
/28	usually enough
/27	default allocation
/26	usually enough
/25	still a lot of IPs!
/24	are you an organization?

The current guideline is to allocate a /27 or smaller by default, keeping space for up to a /26 if possible. Don't allocate more than a /25 worth of addresses and please think before you allocate: If you are going to have 2-3 servers and two VPN-spaces, a /28 is enough to suit your needs. Same will go for most home-networks. This is not public internet, but our IPv4-space is valuable too! If you need a /24 or larger, please ask in the IRC chan or on the mailing list.

For example, if there is no /27 free, you can split up a /26 into two /27. If you are looking for a /27 but there are none showing in the Open Netblocks tool, instead pick one of the /26 and click Take it! When registering your inetnum, instead of writing 172.2x.xxx.0-172.2x.xxx.63 then you can write 172.2x.xxx.0-172.2x.xxx.31. This will get you a /27 and save our IP space for others.

To register for example 172.20.150.0/27, you need to fill in 172.20.150.0-172.20.150.31.

Note: Reverse DNS works with any prefix length, as long as your recursive nameserver supports RFC 2317. Don't go for a /24 just to have RDNS.

example: data/inetnum/172.23.75.0_24

inetnum:            172.23.75.0 - 172.23.75.255
cidr:               172.23.75.0/24
netname:            EVE-NETWORK
admin-c:            MIC92-DN42
tech-c:             MIC92-DN42
mnt-by:             MIC92-MNT
status:             ASSIGNED
source:             DN42

Create route objects

If you plan to announce your prefixes in dn42, which you probably want in most cases, you will also need to create a route6 object for ipv6 prefixes and a route object for ipv4 prefixes. This information is used for Route Origin Authorization (ROA) checks. If you skip this step, your network will probably get filtered by most major peers. Checking ROA will prevent (accidental) hijacking of other people's prefixes.

example: data/route6/fd42:4992:6a6d::_48

route6:             fd42:4992:6a6d::/48
origin:             AS4242420092
mnt-by:             MIC92-MNT
source:             DN42

example data/route/172.23.75.0_24:

route:              172.23.75.0/24
origin:             AS4242420092
mnt-by:             MIC92-MNT
source:             DN42

Get some peers

In dn42, there is no real distinction between peering and transit: in most cases, everybody serves as an upstream provider to all its peers. Note that if you have very slow connectivity to the Internet, you may want to avoid providing transit between your peers, which can be done by filtering or prepending your ASN. For the sake of sane routing, try to peer with people on the same continent to avoid inefficient routing, <50ms is a good rule of thumb. You can also look into Bird communities if you are using Bird to mark the latency for the link.

If you don't know anybody who can peer with you, you can use this tool: https://dn42.us/peers

It will let you find people to peer with. You can then contact them on IRC or by email. In case you're really at loss, you can also ask for peers on the mailing list.

Establishing tunnels

Unless your dn42 peers are on the same network, you must establish tunnels. Choose anything you like: OpenVPN, GRE, GRE + IPSec, IPIP, Tinc, ...

There is some documentation in this wiki, like gre-plus-ipsec.

Running a routing daemon

You need a routing daemon to speak BGP with your peers. People usually run Quagga or Bird, but you may use anything (OpenBGPD, XORP, somebody even used an old hardware router ). See the relevant FAQ entry.

You can find configuration examples for Bird here.

Some [documentation of the old wiki] (http://dn42.volcanis.me/initenv/wiki/HowToPeer.html) might still be handy, but remember that everything there is terribly outdated.

Configuration Examples

• VPN/Tunnel:
  • Openvpn
  • Tinc
  • IPsec with public key authentication
• BGP:
  • Bird
  • Quagga
• Router specific:
  • dn42 on OpenWRT
  • EdgeOS Configuration
  • EdgeOS GRE/IPsec Example
  • BGP on Extreme Networks Summit 1i
• Important Network configuration

Configure DNS

See Services DNS.

Use and provide services

See internal for internal services.

Don't hesitate to provide interesting services, but please, document them on the wiki! Otherwise, nobody will use them because nobody can guess they even exist.