Verizon FiOS - is BGP an option?

Wed Mar 14 21:16:08 UTC 2012

On Wed, 14 Mar 2012, Faisal Imtiaz wrote:

> while this is reasonable, we all have to keep in mind, that you can I can 
> 'toss' in route-reflectors for a few hundred to a few thousand dollars 
> each... Folks like VZ and AT&T pay top dollars for top capacity equipment to 
> handle stuff.. so you are talking about a few 'route-reflectors' for $50k or 
> $150k each ? ....
> (Remember these are the folks who are paying full prices on the Cisco / 
> Juniper boxes.....)

I doubt they are paying list price for their gear.  If they are, I'd like 
to find out who from $carrier pulled the trigger on that deal, so I can 
talk to them about buying some beachfront property in Kansas ;)

Still, point taken, and I didn't mean to suggest that any provider should 
just throw routers on their network on a whim.  I've driven big networks 
for long enough to know that's not such a good idea.

> if you ever looked at the Cisco Top of the line router.. ( I don't remember 
> what it called, but do remember the starting price for a base config is 
> $250K, going up to $750k... was designed to meet the demands of larger 
> network operators such as VZ / AT&T etc...)

I have a quote for a pair of them sitting on my desk - not for the 
customer in question.

> There are existing solutions which are very easy to implement, which will 
> allow you to do this, without having to deal too much with the underlying 
> carrier

I have yet to see such a solution that doesn't:
1. require waiting for DNS records to be updated, at which point you're at 
the mercy of the providers in question and whatever the TTL is on the DNS 
records.
2. turn 1 single point of failure into >1 single points of failure.
3. require manual intervention (me getting called at 3 AM) to fix (see 
item 1).

> so my question becomes.... if you need this, and you can solve this easily 
> from your side... why do you want a behemoth to change and deliver ?.... 
> (Even if they did you are not going to be happy with how they are performing

It was more of a point of wishful thinking and inquiry.  I completely 
understand and accept that said behemoth is unlikely to change their product
portfolio based on a thread on NANOG :)

jms