HE.net BGP origin attribute rewriting

Thu May 31 15:46:46 UTC 2012

From: Nick Hilliard <nick at foobar.org>
>If you don't rewrite your transit providers' origin, then you are telling
>them that they can directly influence your exit discrimination policy on
>the basis of a purely advisory flag which has no real meaning.  

On what precisely do you base the idea that a mandatory transitive attribute of a BGP prefix is a "purely advisory flag which has no real meaning"?  I encourage you to reconsider that opinion - it's actually a useful attribute, much the way that MED is a useful attribute.  Many providers re-write MED, and apparently some re-write ORIGIN.  Neither of those is "network abuse" - it's more accurately described as "network routing policy."  As has been stated here before: your network, your rules.

David Barak
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