====== Anycast IP VPS FREE How-to ======

===== What is Anycast?  =====

Anycast is a routing feature BuyVM offers for free to all customers.  With a functioning Anycast configuration inbound traffic will be routed to the VPS that is nearest to the visitor (i.e. European visitors will go Luxembourg, United States visitors depending on their location will go to either Las Vegas, New York or Miami, Asia visitors will go to Las Vegas, South American visitors will go to Miami etc.).

**Anycast requires customer to have a KVM Slice in all four BuyVM locations (Las Vegas, New York, Miami and Luxembourg).**

===== Why use Anycast? =====

Anycast helps speed up your sites or other services by putting visitors on server closest to them.  Closest server choice results in low latency and higher throughput.  It is ideal for CDN (Content Distribution Network).

===== Does AnyCast Have DDOS Protection?=====
We offer DDOS Protection for AnyCast for **$5.00 monthly** which is powered by Path.net.
===== How much does AnyCast VPS cost ? =====

Anycast is FREE for all BuyVM VPS customers. The cost will be three VPS purchases.  Anycast DOES work on our popular [[https://buyvm.net/kvm-dedicated-server-slices/|512MB monthly plans]].


===== How to Enable BuyVM Anycast =====

  - On any of your three VPS accounts go to the Networking tab, gearbox in the mainip box -> Assign Anycast IP (will be given option to set up to 5 anycast IPs, only one is needed)
  - On each applicable VM, go to Networking tab, ensure Anycast IP is `on`, hit 'Save Changes'
  - On each applicable VM, bind regular IP to eth0, Anycast to eth0:0 with only Address and Netmask fields

Sample /etc/network/interfaces from lv-test.buyvm.net, which uses Anycast:

root # cat /etc/network/interfaces
<code>
        auto lo
        iface lo inet loopback
        
        auto eth0
        allow-hotplug eth0
        iface eth0 inet static
        address         209.141.56.135                                                                                                     
        network         209.141.56.0                                                                                                       
        gateway         209.141.56.1                                                                                                       
        broadcast       209.141.56.255                                                                                                     
        netmask         255.255.255.0                                                                                                      
     
                                                                                                                                              
        auto eth0:v6
        allow-hotplug eth0:v6
        iface eth0:v6 inet6 static
        address         2605:6400:0020:0078::1
        gateway         2605:6400:0020::1
        netmask         48
        
        
        auto eth0:anycast
        allow-hotplug eth0:anycast
        iface eth0:anycast inet static
        address         198.251.86.22
        netmask         255.255.255.0
        </code>
* Standard naming practice is eth0, eth0:0, eth0:1, etc. I use eth0:v6/eth0:anycast simply to identify bindings easier.