Gcore BYOIP: bringing your own IP addresses to Gcore

For Edge Cloud and CDN, you provide a letter of authorization, a route object and a ROA, and Gcore's staff onboard the prefix.

What Gcore accepts

From Gcore's documentation, on the day we checked:

• Three products, three ways in. Edge Cloud through the sales team. CDN, where BYOIP and BYOASN are "paid, manually configured CDN add-ons", through Gcore Support or an account manager. Dedicated servers in Gcore Hosting through an order in the Hosting Portal and a support ticket.
• Size. For CDN, IPv4 prefixes of "/24 or a larger address block" and IPv6 prefixes of "/48 or a larger address block". The Edge Cloud page gives no minimum.
• Ownership. "The organization must own the IP prefix and have it registered with a Regional Internet Registry." No registry is named, and PA, PI and legacy space are not mentioned.
• Who originates. Gcore's ASN, where "Gcore announces the prefixes on the customer's behalf", or your own (BYOASN), which leaves control of the announcements with you. Neither page gives the number of Gcore's ASN.
• Where. Not stated for Edge Cloud or CDN. On dedicated servers, announcement from Gcore's ASN is available only in Kazakhstan.
• Price. No figure for Edge Cloud or CDN. On dedicated servers, BGP from your own AS number is €30 a month, and a subnet announced from Gcore's ASN is €70 a month.
• Timing. Not published.

Before you start

Both Gcore's Edge Cloud checklist and its CDN request list ask for:

• A letter of authorization permitting Gcore to announce the prefix. For CDN, it also authorizes the use of each prefix.
• A route object in a routing registry, with the origin ASN you choose (a route6 object for IPv6).
• A valid ROA for that ASN (RPKI and ROAs).
• The prefix, in CIDR notation. For CDN, also proof that your organization owns it, and the announcement mode you want.

Neither list asks for a token or certificate in the registry record.

Which ASN goes where depends on the mode:

Step by step

Edge Cloud and CDN

Gcore documents a request to its staff here, not a console flow.

01Choose the mode. If Gcore is to announce from its ASN, ask which ASN the ROA and the route object must name. For BYOASN, you need an AS number of your own.

02Create the ROA and the route object for that ASN. With BYOASN, in the RIPE Database:

route:   203.0.113.0/24
origin:  AS64500
mnt-by:  YOUR-MNT
source:  RIPE

03Sign the letter of authorization, or have the holder sign it.

04Contact Gcore. For Edge Cloud, the sales team, which "will validate the required routing information and coordinate the onboarding process". For CDN, Gcore Support or your account manager, who first confirm that you are eligible.

Dedicated servers

01Order the service. In the Gcore Hosting Portal, open Products/Services, then BGP and Subnetwork announce, and click Order next to BGP (your AS number) or Subnetwork announce (Gcore's ASN). For the second, Gcore says to contact technical support to set it up.

02Open a support ticket that names the ordered service and gives the configuration details. Support then configures it. The page lists no session parameters, such as the neighbor address or Gcore's side of the session, so ask for them in the ticket.

Pitfalls

• The ownership wording. Both BYOIP pages are written for prefixes the customer owns. Settle whether leased space qualifies before you sign a lease for Gcore.
• A guessed ASN. Gcore does not publish which ASN originates BYOIP prefixes, and a ROA for the wrong one makes the announcement invalid. Ask first, then create the ROA.
• Gcore's ASN on dedicated servers. Outside Kazakhstan, your addresses on a dedicated server are announced only from your own AS number.
• Less than a /24. CDN rules it out and the Edge Cloud page is silent, but the rest of the internet filters anything smaller.

If you lease the block

Gcore's pages do not say whether leased space qualifies. The Edge Cloud page says the organization must own the prefix, and the CDN page asks for proof that it does. Ask Gcore whether a lease with the holder's letter of authorization is enough before you sign one. If it is, the holder does the registry side: the ROA for the ASN Gcore names, or for yours, the route object, and the letter permitting Gcore to announce the block.

Where RTM Networks fits

We lease /24s and larger from our own RIPE NCC address space, and sell blocks in the RIPE NCC, ARIN and APNIC regions, so if Gcore wants a block you own, we can sell you one (buy IPv4). For space leased from us, we create the ROA and the route object for the ASN Gcore names, and sign the letter of authorization (lease IPv4). We sponsor AS numbers for organizations that do not run their own LIR, which BYOASN and Gcore's BGP service both need (ASN sponsorship). If Gcore will not take your block, we announce it ourselves and deliver it to your Gcore server over GRE or WireGuard, in any size down to a single address (GRE and WireGuard tunnels). More providers are in our BYOIP guides.