Becoming My Own ISP

I now announce my own IPv6 prefix to the internet from a router at home, under my own AS number. Ten years ago, I'd have assumed that was reserved for people with a rack in a data centre and a budget to match. This post covers how I ended up here, what it takes, and why I went through a sponsoring LIR (Olilo) instead of becoming a full RIPE NCC member.

If you've wondered whether you can do this at home: yes, and it costs a lot less than you'd think.

Where it started: Cardiff, 2012

Around 2012 I was working for an MSP, and we became a founding member of the Cardiff Internet Exchange. It has since moved to Newport and is now known as IXWales.

That was my introduction to a part of the internet I'd never really thought about. Up to then, "the internet" was something you bought from a provider and plugged in. Being involved with an exchange meant learning how networks actually connect to each other: ASNs, BGP sessions, peering, who exchanges traffic with whom and why. It's one of those things that's hard to unsee once you've seen it.

Fast forward a few years, and I wanted that hands-on experience for myself, at home, without the day job attached.

Zen to Olilo

For a long time, my home connection was with Zen. Moving to Olilo changed what I could do with it. For a start I was able to add a /29 of IPv4 for my homelab, which gives me a small block of public addresses to play with instead of hiding everything behind a single NAT'd one.

Then Olilo started sponsoring for RIPE. That was the missing piece. I'd already been thinking about my own ASN and IPv6 space, and suddenly there was a straightforward route to getting both through an ISP I was already with. I jumped on it.

First, the alphabet soup

You'll meet these terms constantly, so here's the short version.

• RIR: Regional Internet Registry. They hand out IP addresses and AS numbers for a region of the world. In Europe, that's the RIPE NCC.
• LIR: Local Internet Registry. A member of the RIPE NCC, typically an ISP or hosting company.
• ASN: Autonomous System Number. Your network's identity on the internet.
• PA (Provider Aggregatable): address space an LIR holds and assigns to its customers. It stays with the LIR.
• PI (Provider Independent): address space assigned to you directly (via a sponsoring LIR), portable between providers.
• Sponsoring LIR: an LIR that signs the contract with the RIPE NCC on your behalf, because the RIPE NCC doesn't deal with individual end users for this.

The key point: you can't just ask RIPE for an ASN yourself. You go through an LIR, which leaves two options.

Option 1: Become a full RIPE NCC member

This is the "do it properly" route, and for a home lab it's serious overkill.

For 2026, RIPE's charging scheme is a €1,000 sign-up fee and €1,800 a year per LIR account. The 2027 scheme raises the annual fee to about €1,894. That's before you've announced anything.

What you get for that:

• Your own IPv6 allocation (a /32 as standard, which is 65,536 /48s)
• Voting rights at the RIPE General Meeting
• Direct access to the LIR Portal
• The ability to assign space to your own customers

If you run an actual ISP or hosting business, this is the right move. If you're running a lab at home, it isn't.

Option 2: Use a sponsoring LIR

A sponsoring LIR handles the RIPE NCC paperwork and charges a much smaller fee. Your ASN is assigned to you rather than to them, and under RIPE's rules you can move it to another sponsoring LIR later. The sponsor does have to keep the registration accurate, so pick one that responds to emails.

Sponsors have costs of their own: the RIPE NCC charges them €50 a year per sponsored ASN and €75 a year per PI assignment, which is why free sponsorship is rare these days. Prices across the market vary a lot, so compare.

I went with Olilo (AS212683), who are also my ISP. That's a convenient combination, because BGP needs an upstream willing to run a session with you, and most residential ISPs aren't.

PA vs PI: why I started with PA

My /48 is PA. It comes out of Olilo's allocation and is assigned to me, with Olilo keeping the maintainer relationship in the RIPE database alongside mine.

I chose PA to start with because it was the cheaper way in. I wanted to test the whole setup first (the ASN, the BGP sessions, the RPKI ROA, the announcements) before committing to anything more. That testing is done and it's working, so I've now applied for my PI addresses.

The difference matters, and it's why I'm not stopping at PA:

• The ASN is mine and can move to another sponsor.
• A PA /48 is on loan. If I leave Olilo, the prefix stays with them and I'd need to renumber.
• PI space is mine and portable. It needs a separate sponsorship arrangement and brings a recurring €75 RIPE charge, but there's no renumbering if I change provider.

One thing to know if you're planning the same: IPv4 PI is closed to new assignments, so for newcomers PI means IPv6 PI. Starting on PA is a low-cost way to prove it all works, as long as you accept that it isn't permanent.

The process

Roughly, it went like this:

1. Pick a sponsor and sign up. Olilo handled the sponsoring LIR side, so I didn't need to work through every RIPE form myself.
2. Show that you'll multihome. RIPE expects an ASN to be justified by having, or planning, more than one upstream, usually with written confirmation from the networks involved.
3. Wait for the ASN. This can take anywhere from a few days to a couple of weeks depending on paperwork and queues.
4. Get the /48 assigned and the RIPE database objects in place. That means inet6num, aut-num and a route6 object, plus a maintainer object (mine is MINDSPIT-MNT).
5. Create the RPKI ROA. More on this below.
6. Configure BGP on the router. Mine is a UniFi UCG Fiber, with the WAN on PPPoE.
7. Check the result from outside. Watching the prefix show up on bgp.tools for the first time is very satisfying.
8. Apply for PI once it's proven. With the PA setup tested and working, I applied for PI addresses so the space is mine for the long term.

Technical tips

A few things worth knowing before you start:

Create the RPKI ROA before you announce. A ROA says "this ASN is allowed to originate this prefix." More and more networks drop announcements that RPKI marks invalid, and a prefix with no ROA gets less trust than it used to. Do it first.

Create the route6 object too. It's the older IRR-based way of declaring who may originate your prefix, and plenty of upstreams still build their filters from it.

Don't announce anything more specific than a /48. For IPv6, a /48 is generally the smallest prefix the internet accepts. A /49 will simply be filtered.

Only announce your own prefix. Leaking routes you learned from one upstream to another is one of the classic BGP mistakes. Use an outbound filter that permits only your prefix.

Watch your PPPoE MTU. PPPoE takes 8 bytes of overhead, so you're at 1492 rather than 1500. Connections that establish but stall on larger transfers are very often an MTU issue. Clamp your MSS.

Verify from the outside. bgp.tools and public looking glasses show what the rest of the world sees, which isn't always what your router believes it announced.

Confirm your upstream will actually run BGP with you. Many ISPs won't. Ask before you commit to anything.

What I use it for

Mostly learning, and a lab that doesn't depend on an upstream's address space staying the same. Specifically:

• A stable address block for my lab (mindspit.net)
• A proper understanding of how routing works on the real internet
• The chance to add a second path and see failover work properly

On that last point, my next step is announcing the same prefix over a WireGuard tunnel to bgptunnel.com. It's 100 Mbps next to my ISP's multi gigabit, so it won't carry my main traffic. Outbound stays on my primary connection and the tunnel acts as an additional announcement path. I'll write that one up separately.

Was it worth it?

On cost, a sponsored ASN and a /48 is hobby money. Compared with €1,800 or more a year for full LIR membership I'd never use, it's an easy decision.

On time, a few evenings of reading RIPE documentation.

If you're thinking of doing the same: find a sponsoring LIR that answers questions, consider starting on PA to test before moving to PI, and plan how you'll satisfy the multihoming requirement. The rest is configuration.

Spotted something I've got wrong, or have a question? Get in touch. I'm still learning, and corrections are welcome.