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Path matching

The component monitorPath allows to specify rules in order to get notified when specific conditions are matched on AS_PATHs.

The rules must be expressed with regular expressions (if you need to refresh your skills or test a regular expression, I suggest this). The AS_PATH parsed by BGPalerter are in the form 137,3333,1335,2914.

Example: The prefixes list of BGPalerter has an entry such as:

165.254.255.0/24:
   asn: 15562
   description: an example on path matching
   ignoreMorespecifics: false
   path:
     - match: ".*2194,1234$"
       notMatch: ".*5054.*"
       matchDescription: detected scrubbing center
     - match: ".*123$"
       notMatch: ".*5056.*"
       matchDescription: other match

Each item in the path list is a matching rule. Each matching rule is composed of:

  • match, the regular expression that will be tested on each AS path. If the expression tests positive, the BGP message triggers an alert. ASns are comma separated (see example above).
  • notMatch, the regular expression that will be tested on each AS path. If the expression tests positive, the BGP message will not trigger an alert. ASns are comma separated (see example above).
  • matchDescription, the description that will be reported in the alert in case the matchin rule results in a match.
  • maxLength, the maximum length allowed for an AS path. Longer paths will trigger an alert.
  • minLength, the minimum length allowed for an AS path. Shorter paths will trigger an alert.

Remember, the various matching rules are in OR among each other, while the fields inside a single matching rule are in AND.
This means that in the example above, the user will receive an alert if (".*2194,1234$" AND NOT ".5054.") OR (".*123$" AND NOT ".5056.")

Some common examples

  • (,|^)789$ - match paths that originate with AS789, no matter what it has in front (including nothing);
  • (,|^)456, - match any path that traverses AS456 at any point, except origin;
  • (,|^)456(,|$) - match any path that traverses AS456 at any point (including as origin, or as last AS);
  • ^123,456, - match paths where the last traversed ASns were 123 and 456 (in that order);
  • ^123,456,789$ - match the exact path "123,457,789";
  • \[789,101112\] - match paths containing the AS_SET [789, 101112].

Match regular expression with multiple conditions in AND

If you want to specify multiple conditions in AND in the same match parameter, you can use the positive lookahead construct offered natively by regular expressions. A positive lookahead is in the form (?=exp1)(?=exp2) where exp1 and exp2 are regular expressions. Positive lookaheads work also for expressing negative conditions (e.g., (?!exp)), but in most of the cases this is redundant with the notMatch parameter.