Route Management Best Practices

Tue Jan 31 18:52:44 UTC 2012

Thanks Mark,

This helps and definitely shows Im heading in the right direction.

Thanks,

On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 2:17 AM, Mark Tinka <mtinka at globaltransit.net>wrote:

> On Tuesday, January 31, 2012 03:04:15 PM Joe Marr wrote:
>
> > What do you use for reflectors, hardware(Cisco/Juniper)
> > or software daemons(Quagga)?
>
> We operate 2x networks.
>
> One of them runs Cisco 7201 routers as route reflectors,
> while the other runs Juniper M120 routers.
>
> The large Juniper routers were due to particular BGP AFI's
> that Cisco IOS does not support (yet).
>
> > I've been toying with the idea of using Quagga route
> > servers to announce our prefixes to our edge routers and
> > redistribute BGP annoucements learned from downstream
> > customers.
>
> You can certainly use any device in your network to
> originate your allocations. We just use the route reflectors
> because it is a natural fit, but you can use any device
> provided it would be as stable and independent as a route
> reflector.
>
> The last thing you want is a blackhole or a route going away
> because your backhaul failed or your customer DoS'ed your
> edge router :-).
>
> > Only drawback is the lack of support for
> > tagged static routes, so it looks like I'm going to have
> > to use a network statement w/ route-map to set the
> > attributes.
>
> There was a time when networks were ran without prefix
> lists, BGP communities or even route maps. I'm too young to
> have ever experienced those times, but I always joke with a
> friend (from those times) about how good we have it today,
> and how hard life must have been for Internet engineers of
> old :-).
>
> If you have the opportunity, I'd advise against operating
> without these very useful tools.
>
> > Has anyone tried this, or is it suicide?
>
> I'm sure there are several networks out there that are
> intimidated by additional BGP features such as communities,
> advanced routing policy, e.t.c. They do survive without
> having to deal with this, probably because they're networks
> are small and the pain is better than trying something new.
> But I certainly wouldn't recommend it to anyone (except, as
> Randy would say, my competitors).
>
> Mark.
>