North American Network Operators Group
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RE: AT&T NYC

  • From: Iljitsch van Beijnum
  • Date: Fri Aug 30 07:15:56 2002 
On Thu, 29 Aug 2002, Ralph Doncaster wrote:

> > Ralph, you
> > have never failed to amaze me with your love for WCP (Worst Current
> > Practices.)

> OK, then hand me a clue and explain why ruing an iBGP mesh with 3-4
> routers is so bad (seeing as Bassam Halabi didn't in his book).

I would definately not recommend route reflection or a confederation in a
network with such a small number of BGP routers: you add lots of
complexity, potential for less optimal routing (and possibly obscure
implementation problems) and the only thing you gain is not having to
reconfigure the existing BGP routers when you add a new one.

If this is really your main concern, you can always make one router a
route reflector but still keep the full IBGP mesh. Then you can add a new
BGP router and you just have to configure a session with the reflector and
save setting up IBGP sessions with the rest of the BGP routers for when
you have some time on your hands. (Obviously you have a problem if the
reflector fails before you get around to this.)

I'm pretty sure this will earn me a place on someone's worst practices
list, though.  :-)

Iljitsch van Beijnum