As described in the IRP Components section, the explorer is the actual service that performs active remote network probing and tracing.
Explorer runs active and passive probings through all the available providers in order to determine the best one for the particular prefix. Such metrics as packet loss, latency, link capacity and link load are taken into consideration. In order to run a probe through a particular provider, Explorer needs the following to be configured:
- An additional IP alias for each provider should be assigned and configured on the IRP server. This IP will be used as a source address during the probing process.
It is recommended to configure reverse DNS records for each IP using the following template:performance-check-via-<PROVIDER-NAME>. HARMLESS-NOCTION-IRP-PROBING.<YOUR-DOMAIN-NAME>.
- Policy-based routing (PBR) has to be configured on the edge router(s), so that traffic originating from each of these probing IP addresses will exit the network via specific provider. See specific PBR configuration in the Specific PBR configuration scenarios section.If network has Flowspec capabilities then alternatively Flowspec policies can be used instead of PBR. Refer for example Flowspec policies, global.flowspec.pbr.
- Policy-based routing has to be configured to drop packets rather than routing them through the default route in case that the corresponding Next-Hop does not exist in the routing table.
It is recommended to configure reverse DNS records for each IP using the following template: