How to Use the Bring Your Own IP Feature

The Bring Your Own IP (BYOIP) feature allows you to use IP address ranges that you already own, as Additional IPs directly on the OVHcloud network and products.

These IP addresses will be imported in the form of a /24 IP block size and will behave like a regular OVHcloud Additional IP block product.

Requirements

• Your IP range must be in a supported RIR
• Your IP range must have a supported size
• Your IP range is not in use on the Internet
• Your IP/AS have a clean reputation
• You need to choose a data center
• You must prove ownership of the IP range
• You must prove ownership of the AS number
• You have to allow OVHcloud to announce the IP range

Your IP range must be in a supported RIR

A Regional Internet Registry (RIR) is an organization that manages IP addresses in a given region.

You need to own (see below) a public IPv4 block with the following RIR:

• ARIN
• RIPE

It is now possible to use ARIN or RIPE IP blocks at any OVHcloud data center. This enhanced flexibility enables more efficient management and optimized allocation of IP addresses to meet your company's specific needs.

Unlike the previous policy, where an ARIN block could only be used with OVHcloud services located in Canada or the USA, and a RIPE block could only be used with OVHcloud services located in Europe, this restriction has been lifted.

To be considered as a valid owned block, imported blocks must be one of the following types:

Your IP range must have a supported size

We accept IP blocks from size /24 up to size /19. Below, is the number of /24 you will receive from the imported range:

Your IP range is not in use on the Internet

The range must not be announced or in use on the Internet (no announcement in terms of Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) on at least one public network). You are free not to meet this prerequisite, in which case OVHcloud will not be able to ensure the proper functioning and support of this service.

Your IP/AS have a clean reputation

We may refuse to use IPs/AS with a bad reputation, and we reserve the right to stop announcing the IPs/AS if their reputation has a negative impact on OVHcloud’s reputation.

You need to choose a data center

A data center can be viewed as a list of data centers where an IP can be used.

You will need to choose one data center where your IP will be used. Once the delivery is done, you will be able to move any /24 size block obtained from the imported range to any OVHcloud services in the same data center as the one chosen at order time.

Below is a list of current data centers:

• VIN (Vint Hill)
  • vin1
• HIL (Hillsboro)
  • hil1

You must prove ownership of the IP range

To prove that you are the owner of the range, you will be requested to enter a special token which we will provide, into the public whois object corresponding to your range. This will be done via the web portal of the RIR managing your IPs. This token will be provided at order.

• For ARIN, edit the « Public Comments » field of the « Network » object.
• For RIPE, edit the « descr » field of the « inetnum » object of the IP.

The token must appear in the description field (see above) of the whois object, in a dedicated line. Other lines may be present, as long as the token is present in its own dedicated line in the description. The token must be added before placing the order, and must not be removed until the end of the delivery process.

You must prove ownership of the AS number (required only if you provide an AS number)

To prove that you are the owner of the AS number, you will be required to reuse the same token previously used to prove ownership of the IP range and insert it into the public whois object corresponding to the AS number. This will be done via the web portal of the RIR managing your AS number. This token will be provided in order (it may also be found directly in the OVHcloud Control Panel, in the IP section).

• For ARIN, edit the « Public Comments » field of the « ASN » object.
• For RIPE, edit the « descr » field of the « aut-num » object of the AS number.

The token must appear in the description field (see above) of the whois object, in a dedicated line. Other lines may be present, as long as the token is present in its own dedicated line in the description. The token must be added before placing the order, and must not be removed until the end of the delivery process.

You have to allow OVHcloud to announce the IP range

On the RIR where the IP range is registered, you will need to create a route object for it (matching exactly the IP range), with the OVHcloud AS number (“AS16276”) or your own AS number in the origin field of the route object.

For more information on route objects, please refer to your RIR’s documentation page :

• ARIN - Submitting Routing Information
• RIPE - Managing Route Objects

Instructions

How to use the product

The imported IPs will behave like the current Additional IP product. An imported IP range will be split into /24 blocks that will be movable to any service on the same data center.

To activate the announcement of your imported IP range on the Internet, simply assign one of your blocks to an eligible product via the control panel or the OVHcloud API.

During the delivery, we will create ARPA zones on our DNS servers and any reverse DNS modification via the OVHcloud Control Panel/API will be applied to them. However, these modifications will be visible to the public when our DNS servers receive delegations of the ARPA zones by the RIR. (This is optional if you want to continue managing your reverse DNS on your own, you can).

Range slicing

Any imported IP block can be further split into smaller blocks and/or individual addresses.

To slice a block, use the following API call :

POST /ip/{ip}/bringYourOwnIp/slice

Use the following parameters:

• ip: the IP block you want to slice, in CIDR notation.
• slicingSize: the resulting size of the sliced blocks, expressed as a network prefix size, in bits. For example, if you want to slice a /24 block into two smaller blocks of size /25, you should enter the value "25".

You can preview the resulting blocks that would be created for each block size, by using the following API call:

GET /ip/{ip}/bringYourOwnIp/slice

Use the following parameters:

• ip: the IP block you want to slice, in CIDR notation.

To merge back a block into a parent block, use this API call :

POST /ip/{ip}/bringYourOwnIp/aggregate

Use the following parameters:

• ip: the IP block you want to slice, in CIDR notation.
• aggregationIp: the resulting block, in CIDR notation.

The resulting block will be an aggregate of all its children blocks.

You can preview all the possible configurations of aggregated blocks for a given IP block, by using the following API call:

GET /ip/{ip}/bringYourOwnIp/aggregate

Use the following parameters:

• ip: the IP block you want to merge into a parent block, in CIDR notation.

This call returns a list of possible aggregated blocks and, for each one of them, gives the list of children blocks to be merged back.

Limitations:

• This feature is currently available via API only. It will be added to the OVHcloud Control Panel in the near future.
• Configuration elements associated with individual IP addresses (/32) such as firewall rules or reverse DNS entries will be kept after slicing/merging operations.
• Slice/Aggregate API tasks cannot be followed up by the asynchronous task number returned by API, as associated IP objects will be destroyed in the slice/aggregate process.
• The listing of IP addresses and blocks returned by API is ordered by network prefix size. We are working to provide a solution to list IPs in numerical order.
• Once sliced, smaller blocks are not movable outside the data center chosen during the order of the product.
• Moving a /24 block across US data centers won't work if :
  • It has been reaggregated from a previous slicing.
  • The /24 block was imported from a bigger block (/23 to /19).

FAQ