Location of upstream connections & BGP templates

Steve Bertrand steve at ibctech.ca
Thu Feb 18 00:10:49 UTC 2010


Hey all,

I've got a couple of questions that I'd like operational feedback about.
.

Although we're an ISP, we currently are only an access provider. We
don't yet provide any transit services, but the requirement for us to do
so may creep up on a very small scale shortly. Nonetheless...

I'm on the latter stages of transforming our network from flat to
layered. My thinking is that my 'upstream' connections should be moved
out of the core, and onto the edge. My reasoning for this is so that I
can eliminate ACL/filtering etc from the core, and push it ALL out
toward the edge, keeping the core as fast, sleek and maintenance-free as
possible. I visualize my transit providers as essentially 'access', not
part of my core backbone.

What do other providers do? Are your transit peers connected directly to
the core? I can understand such a setup for transit-only providers, but
I can't see how that makes sense for any provider that provides (mostly)
access services. I'm looking for feedback from both large and small
providers, just to gain some perspective.

Another question, along the same lines, due to recent discussions, I've
done a great deal of research on BGP templates, and now want to migrate
to them from peer-group. Before I waste lab time configuring things, I
just want to ask for feedback based on experience on whether the
following makes sense/will work for transition:

- configure template structure
- 'no' a single neighbour
- apply templates to neighbour
- the neighbour comes back up
- wash, rinse, repeat

Steve




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