North American Network Operators Group
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Re: PI space and colocation

  • From: Patrick W. Gilmore
  • Date: Thu Jan 19 15:20:58 2006 
On Jan 19, 2006, at 3:02 PM, Pete Templin wrote:


Patrick W. Gilmore wrote:
Is it a reasonable alternative to establish a BGP connection with the
provider over ethernet?
It is technical feasible, but I don't think 'reasonable'. Stub ASes are pollution on the 'Net.
OK, let's try a similar but different scenario. Customer has ISP A, adds ISP B ("you"). Customer intends to disconnect from ISP A. Assuming the customer told you, do you require the customer to start their connection with you as a private AS, do you require the customer to re-AS-number later, or do you assume the customer will re-multihome, etc.?
First: Customer is probably not already doing BGP, since they are single homed to ISP A. When they connect to me, if they honestly plan to dump ISP B ("you" :), then they probably won't want to go through the hassle of setting up BGP. Of the literally millions of "customers" in the world, there are only a few thousands (say, on the order of 0.1%) who want or do BGP.

Assuming they tell you their plans, why wouldn't you rather just originate their prefixes and static route to them? They can be multi- originated for a while, doesn't hurt anything. Certainly better than adding superfluous info into the global table permanently.

Easier for you, easier for them, and better for the Internet. Why wouldn't you do it?


And what if the customer doesn't tell you that they're intending to leave ISP A? Do you police this, and if so how regularly?
Of course you should police it, but it ain't the end of the world. How often? How about when you get around to it, or maybe when someone notifies you?

I'm not suggesting stub ASes should be disallowed by law. It's just when someone asks, why wouldn't you suggest not doing it? If they customer screams, well, they're paying you (or someone else if you don't do it), so I guess you kinda have to do it.


I'm confused at the few (three, if I include you) people who are questioning this. Are any of you honestly advocating stub ASNs and other completely useless info should be encouraged in the global table?


(And yes, Patrick, IKYNAI.  We'll pretend for the moment.)

Doesn't stop me from commenting. :-)

--
TTFN,
patrick