Multihop eBGP peering or VPN based eBGP peering

Mon Jun 17 04:36:46 UTC 2013

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael McConnell [mailto:michael at winkstreaming.com] 
Sent: Sunday, June 16, 2013 7:40 PM
To: nanog at nanog.org
Subject: Multihop eBGP peering or VPN based eBGP peering

>Any idea why more companies don't offer eBGP peering / multi hop
peering? Its very common for providers to offer single or double hop
peering, so why not 5 or 10 hops? In many cases people find it logical
to perform single or double hop peering, why is >peering any greater
always frowned upon. I understand the logic that you can't control the
path beyond a point, however I still see numerous advantages.

The norm has always been if you are peering with someone you have router
in the location you are peering. Thus, direct connection!!! 
But I've seen folks do what you are describing but in terms of their own
networks thru use of GRE Tunnels. The main point of peering is having
better connectivity and dropping traffic directly or closest to its
destination.

>One obvious advantages one is, imagine you east coast data centre and
you had a eBGP peering session with a west coast router, you'd be able
to control ingress via the west coast. (aka routing around an region
outage that is effecting ingress) For >example during the last hurricane
around New Jersey, numerous tier 1's were down towards the atlantic and
every peer for the atlantic was effected. One could have just made the
ingress via the west coast the logical route. 

I do see this advantage being an obvious workable logical one. However,
large providers typically have their own network (layers 1-3) coast to
coast if were talking USA. But in the case of the hurricane situation
many were without power so you can have a router west coast and announce
from that router but how will you get traffic back to east coast if
that's your data center? 

You see you can have routers all over but if your data center (CDN) is
without power you are done.

Otis