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Re: multi-homing fixes

  • From: Joel Baker
  • Date: Thu Aug 23 22:02:02 2001

On Fri, Aug 24, 2001 at 01:45:59AM +0000, Vijay Gill wrote:
> 
> Daniel Hagerty <[email protected]> writes:
> 
> 
> >     Take prefixes from both providers and use them.  Route your egress
> > traffic appropriately.
> > 
> >     My point wasn't that "there is no need to BGP multihome", but that
> > many seem to see this as the only way of achieving use of multiple
> > providers worth of pipe.  There are other alternatives, depending on
> > your application.
> 
> This is a possible solution (and similar ideas have been bought up in
> the v6 arena as well).  This runs into two things:

[ snip #1 ]

> 2) proper end unit (host) source address selection.
> 
> the way around #2 is to use some sort of a NAT scheme, and number
> internally out of say, net10, and NAT appropriately at the autonomous
> system edge.  With the "servers" as it were (mail, http, ftp et al.) 
> being configured to listen on public address or special ports, etc.

Or by SCTP - an elegant, protocol-level solution to most of the basic
reasons for small businesses (IE, those not likely to qualify for a
provider-independant block) to want multihoming.

Unfortunately, it appears to be even more poorly adopted than IPv6 so far,
and until it's present and turned on by default in end user systems (hello,
Redmond), it won't be terribly useful, since it requires the ability to run
end-to-end. Though arguably it would help matters greatly if it were just
supported by the proxies most ISPs force dialup users through, anymore.
-- 
***************************************************************************
Joel Baker                           System Administrator - lightbearer.com
[email protected]              http://www.lightbearer.com/~lucifer