Errors like "bgp1: Error: Hold timer expired"

[Roger Whittaker]

I'm trying to use bird to help prevent spam as described here:

https://debian-administration.org/article/715/Preventing_SPAM_connections_with_bird

I understand very little about BGP, so I'm really using that article
as a "recipe", and have used the config file there more or less as is,
except for changing the router id setting and enabling logging (and
I've increased scan time to 600).

First question: is trying to use bird in this way in any case this a
sensible thing to do?

If so: second question - I'm seeing the following behaviour:

2017-01-05 15:24:21 <INFO> Started
2017-01-05 15:24:21 <ERR> KRT: Received route 0.0.0.0/0 with unknown ifindex 2
2017-01-05 15:27:59 <RMT> bgp1: Error: Hold timer expired
2017-01-05 15:34:01 <RMT> bgp1: Error: Hold timer expired
2017-01-05 15:34:21 <ERR> KRT: Received route 0.0.0.0/0 with unknown ifindex 2
2017-01-05 15:40:11 <RMT> bgp1: Error: Hold timer expired
2017-01-05 15:44:21 <ERR> KRT: Received route 0.0.0.0/0 with unknown ifindex 2
2017-01-05 15:46:16 <RMT> bgp1: Error: Hold timer expired
2017-01-05 15:52:20 <RMT> bgp1: Error: Hold timer expired
2017-01-05 15:54:21 <ERR> KRT: Received route 0.0.0.0/0 with unknown ifindex 2
2017-01-05 15:58:35 <RMT> bgp1: Error: Hold timer expired

I can't find much reference to these errors in the mailing list
archives.

But it seems that when the "Hold timer expired" errors happen, the
blackhole entries in the routing table disappear for a while.

It would be great if someone could comment on this.

Roger


-- 
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Roger Whittaker
roger at disruptive.org.uk
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