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Anycast

The Anycast section of the NetActuate portal provides full control over your global anycast deployment. From Networking → Anycast, you can manage BGP sessions across multiple locations, configure anycast groups, monitor prefix announcements, and review traffic analytics — all without opening a support ticket.

Dashboard​

The Anycast dashboard tab gives you an at-a-glance view of anything that needs attention.

Non-Established Sessions​

The top of the dashboard lists any anycast sessions that are not in an established state. Each entry shows:

  • Group — the anycast group the session belongs to
  • Tags — any tags assigned to the session
  • Location — the point of presence where the session is configured
  • Customer IP — your side of the BGP peering
  • Downtime — how long the session has been down
  • Error — the reason for the non-established state

Quick actions are available for each session: Start, Refresh.

Rejected Routes​

Below the session list, a rejected routes panel shows any prefixes that have been rejected by the peer, so you can quickly identify configuration issues.

Analytics​

The Analytics tab provides detailed traffic and distance metrics for your anycast deployment.

Inbound Anycast Traffic​

A time-series chart showing total inbound anycast traffic across all locations.

Source Distance​

Source distance metrics show how far traffic is traveling to reach your anycast locations, measured in kilometers. Three percentile lines are displayed:

  • Median (50th percentile) — half of your traffic travels less than this distance
  • 75th percentile — 75% of traffic is within this range
  • 90th percentile — the long tail of distant sources

Lower distance values indicate healthy anycast routing — traffic is reaching the nearest PoP. High values may indicate a routing issue, a sinkholed prefix, or an imbalance in session distribution.

Inbound Traffic by Data Center​

A breakdown of inbound traffic per data center showing:

  • Bits per second
  • Packets per second
  • Median source distance for traffic arriving at that DC

Highest Distance by Data Center​

Highlights which data centers are receiving traffic from the most distant sources. Useful for identifying locations that may be attracting traffic that should be served by a closer PoP.

Inbound Traffic by AS​

Shows which autonomous systems are sending you the most traffic, with:

  • Bits per second
  • Packets per second
  • Source distance

Highest Distance by AS​

Identifies the source ASNs with the highest median distance. Helpful for spotting specific networks whose traffic is being routed suboptimally.

Traffic Heatmap​

An overlay map showing packets per second across your anycast locations. Denser areas indicate higher traffic concentration.

Distance Heatmap​

A geographic heatmap where color indicates routing health:

  • Green — traffic is reaching a nearby PoP (healthy routing)
  • Red — traffic is traveling far from its source to reach a PoP, indicating a potential sinkhole, missing session, or routing imbalance

Groups​

An anycast group is the core organizational unit. Each group combines:

  • An ASN — the autonomous system number used for the group's BGP sessions
  • Allowed prefixes — the IP prefixes the group is authorized to announce
  • Routing policy — how traffic is routed across sessions
  • DDoS policy — what mitigation actions to take on attack detection and conclusion
  • Attached resources — the VMs, Kubernetes nodes, or bare metal servers behind the group

You can create multiple groups to serve different purposes. For example, a DNS provider might run three groups (NS1, NS2, NS3) with different ISP mixes, routing policies, and location sets for geographic diversity.

Group Sidebar​

Clicking a group opens its detail sidebar showing:

  • Name and description
  • ASN assigned to the group
  • AS-SET / IRR — if configured, prefixes are automatically imported from the IRR database based on your AS-SET
  • Sessions list — all BGP sessions in the group with their current state
  • Start All / Stop All — bulk session control
  • Add Session — create a new session within the group

Session Sidebar​

Clicking an individual session within a group opens the session detail sidebar:

  • Start / Stop / Refresh / Delete — session lifecycle controls
  • Description — free-text label for the session
  • State — current BGP state (Established, Active, Idle, Connect)
  • BFD Status — Bidirectional Forwarding Detection state
  • Group — the parent anycast group
  • Customer ASN — your ASN
  • Provider Peer ASN — NetActuate's ASN for this session
  • Customer IP — your side of the peering
  • Provider IP — NetActuate's side of the peering
  • Received Routes — prefixes received from the peer
  • Rejected Routes — prefixes rejected by the peer
  • Prefixes — prefixes being announced
  • Connected Resource Instance — the VM, bare metal server, or Kubernetes node the session is attached to
  • Service Status — operational status of the session

Prefixes in Groups​

Prefixes are attached at the group level. All sessions within a group announce the same set of prefixes. You can add or remove prefixes from the group, and the change propagates to all member sessions.

Sessions​

The Sessions tab provides a global view of all anycast sessions across all groups and locations. You can filter sessions by:

  • State — established, active, idle, or down
  • Accepted / rejected routes
  • Location — specific point of presence
  • Group — specific anycast group
  • Tags — custom session tags

Clicking any session opens the same session detail sidebar described above.

Prefixes​

The Prefixes tab lists all prefixes available to your anycast groups. Prefixes can be:

  • Manually assigned — added through the portal or API
  • Auto-imported — pulled from the IRR database based on your AS-SET configuration

ASNs​

The ASNs tab shows all autonomous system numbers registered and validated by NetActuate for your account. ASNs listed here can be assigned to any of your BGP or anycast groups.

Getting Started​

Need Help?​

Contact support@netactuate.com or open a support ticket from the portal.