Anycast IP VPS FREE How-to

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 or New York, Asia visitors will go to Las Vegas, etc.).

Anycast requires customer to have a KCM Slice in all three BuyVM locations (Las Vegas, New York and Luxembourg).

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).

Anycast is FREE for all BuyVM VPS customers. The cost will be three VPS purchases. Anycast DOES work on our popular 512MB monthly plans.

1. 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)
2. On each applicable VM, go to Networking tab, ensure Anycast IP is `on`, hit 'Save Changes'
3. 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

      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
      

* Standard naming practice is eth0, eth0:0, eth0:1, etc. I use eth0:v6/eth0:anycast simply to identify bindings easier.