I’ve always dreamt of owning my little corner of the Internet and interacting with the big boys directly. All the way back in my naive childhood days where I thought owning a website meant having your own corner of the Internet. Which is true to an extent, however the more I learnt about the inner workings of the Internet the more I realised how complicated it all really is. IP, subnets, prefixes, BGP, this was all confusing to my tiny brain back then. I was curious but not curious enough. Till one day I was tired of my current Internet speed and stability, that’s where I decided enough was enough and I took a deep dive into networking.

So fast forward a few years later and here I am, registering for my own ASN and IPv6 space. A subnet to call mine, one where I could do whatever I want with it. To say I’m excited would be a pretty big understatement. To be able to see years of studying and learning finally come into play, to peer with other networks and have your own presence. It’s a very weird yet satisfying & fuzzy feelings. I’ll be putting a timeline here to document the journey and all problems I face.

• Jan 16, 2023: Started looking around for hosting providers that do BGP for cheap or for free. Found the good folk at BuyVM have that option with no bandwidth caps. Vultr does the same although they have a 1TB limit for their cheapest VPS'

• Jan 18, 2023: Sent my initial application to Cloudie for my RIPE ASN assignment. He throws in a /40 subnet as well which is really welcome. Great guy with a great Discord server, check out discord.gg/ipv6 if you have any problems or also want to start your own network.

• Jan 19, 2023: Learning about the technicals of BGP and also starting to get pretty good at IPv6, since it’s the future. However I do want a /24 IPv4 range as well once the budget allows.

• Jan 23, 2023: The day my ASN got allocated and assigned to me. Still learning about BGP and will hopefully see a working network on the next upcoming days

• Jan 24, 2023: My Organisation’s country accidentally got assigned to Iran. While I still don’t know why Iraq and Iran get mixed together I’ve sent an email to correct it either way. I got a subnet from route48 assigned and setup my first BGP session with them meanwhile I get the organisation country fixed.

• Jan 25, 2023: Established a BGP session with physical transit in the same city. Should hopefully see 2 /48 subnets light up straight to my house.

• Jan 27, 2023: Established a BGP session with FranTech (BuyVM) and started announcing a /48 prefix. Tunneled a /56 to one of the subnets @ home and is working wonderfully so far

• Jan 29, 2023: Physical transit lit up and is transmitting the 2 /48 subnets announced. Already seeing improvements over IPv4

• Feb 4, 2023: Joined FogIXP and started peering with AS’s there via the route servers

• Feb 21, 2023: Joined LocIX and started peering with AS’s there via the route servers. Also agreed with Hurricane Electric to provide me free IPv6 transit successfully becoming #3 for Known Peers in Iraq according to bgp.tools.

• Feb 23, 2023: Configured my first downstream

• Feb 27, 2023: Leased my first /24 IPv4 range. Allowing my ASN to be dual stacked and not just tied to IPv6 only.