Upon popular request, we've added a new agent to the Kentik platform – Kentik BGP proxy (kbgp) – which enables BGP enrichment of flow data to internal network devices without requiring global IP connectivity. Before kbgp, customers could only establish BGP sessions with devices with an assigned public IP address. Via kbgp, BGP enrichment can now extend to flow data generated from all internal areas of your network, further enhancing network troubleshooting for on-prem and campus environments. Read on for details!

Kentik BGP proxy (kbgp) is a Kentik agent that can proxy BGP peering sessions between customer devices inside the customer’s network and Kentik over the Internet. The kbgp is deployed inside the customer’s private network. The customer devices are able to establish BGP peering with the kbgp, which will multiplex and relay BGP packets in real time to Kentik. The result would be the same as if the devices are peering directly with Kentik.

The functionality is achieved similarly to the functionality that is performed by kproxy, which collects flows locally inside the customer’s network and securely exports them to Kentik inside an HTTPS tunnel.

Without kbgp, customer devices can only establish BGP sessions with Kentik over the Internet, which requires that the customer device has a public IP address assigned. With the use of kbgp, multiple registered devices can have BGP peering with a single kbgp. The BGP session packets are carried over a secure gRPC session to Kentik, where the BGP session is logically established and the data is transferred. kbgp does not store any BGP state or BGP routes, making this agent lightweight and requiring very few resources.

The image below shows the logical diagram of kbgp usage inside a customer’s network

The key benefits of deploying kbgp in a Kentik-monitored network include:

• Kentik will be able to add BGP context to the flow data from internal network devices that don't have global IP connectivity
• The BGP data is secured and encrypted during the transfer from the customer's network to Kentik

At the moment, kbgp does not appear under the Kentik Agents section in the Settings menu, but we are actively working on a way to display the agent within the UI. For more information about the kbgp installation, configuration, and troubleshooting, please check out our kbgp KB article and let us know your feedback in the comments.