BIG-IP BGP Routing Protocol Configuration And Use Cases

Is the F5 BIG-IP a router? Yes! No! Wait what? Can the BIG-IP run a routing protocol? Yes. But should it be deployed as a core router? An edge router? Stay tuned. We'll explore these questions ...
Published Jan 11, 2024
Version 1.0
application delivery
cloud
security
Ajayraj1's avatar
Ajayraj1
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May 12, 2025

I'm testing similar setup in our environment and want to check with you the best approach. I have 2 kind of design that I want to do. 1 is front and backend in same vlan and other one on 2 different vlans(Topology attached). I'll be using 2 seperate vlan to connect to 2 switch and running BGP over it. Expectation is there wont be a connection drop in the event of a switch failure or big ip failure.

These are the thing I did inorder to make it work. I want to check with you if there is any better way to do this.

  1. Attached a SNAT to the Virtual Server(Standard type) and advertised to BGP.
  2. SNAT, I created as standard type virtual server inorder to get them in kernel and redistribute to BGP.
  3. Disabled Autolast hop.
  4. Disabled vlan keyed connection
  5. Enabled connection mirroring for the Virtual server.
  6. In BGP, I disabled graceful restart and enabled BFD.
  7. All of them are ebgp and I have set BGP advertise interval to 0 inorder to advertise updates as quickly as possible.

I found and article online https://my.f5.com/manage/s/article/K13558, that state to enable loose close/initiation enabled for fastl4 protocol profile. But in my case I have the virtual servers including SNAT configured as type standard.

I want to do the same thing with GTM. Do you have any suggestions here?