Internet Exchange Point(IXP) questions

Leo Bicknell bicknell at ufp.org
Fri Feb 18 02:31:22 UTC 2011


In a message written on Fri, Feb 18, 2011 at 02:17:48AM +0000, Michael K. Smith - Adhost wrote:
> On the Seattle Internet Exchange (SIX) we have ARIN-assigned addresses that we use on the Layer 2 fabric (your type 2 above).  Hopefully the addresses aren't being announced at all, although we sometimes have to chase down people that announce it.  Those addresses aren't the destination for any traffic, they are merely part of the transport to a destination, so there is no need for them to be in the DFZ.

I've had to deal with exchanges like this in the past, and frankly
they have always been a pain for the support organization.

You see, customers use tools like mtr or Visual Traceroute that do
a traceroute and then continuously ping each hop.  Many of these
customers don't have a default route, or default to their _other_
provider.  These tools end up showing 100% loss at the exchange,
as they get the traceroute response and then can't ping it.

They then open a ticket, and your support organization has to explain
to them how all of this works and why it isn't the real cause of
their problem.

My preference is that the exchange get an ASN, peer with everyone
(e.g.  from the route server) and announce the exchange prefix.
That way it's consistently announced.  For exchange that don't do
this, I've always put the prefix into BGP in such a way that I will
announce it but only to my customers to work around this problem.

Please get your own ASN and announce the route, for the sake of all of
your members.

-- 
       Leo Bicknell - bicknell at ufp.org - CCIE 3440
        PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 826 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/attachments/20110217/a1b6324e/attachment.sig>


More information about the NANOG mailing list