Policy-based routing is evil? Discuss.

Fri Oct 11 22:59:22 UTC 2013

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Phil Bedard wrote:
> I'm having a discussion with a small network in a part of the world
> where bandwidth is scarce and multiple DSL lines are often used for
> upstream links. The topic is policy-based routing, which is being
> described as "load balancing" where end-user traffic is assigned to a
> line according to source address.
> 
> In my opinion the main problems with this are:
> 
>   - It's brittle, when a line fails, traffic doesn't re-route
>   - None of the usual debugging tools work properly
>   - Adding a new user is complicated because it has to be done in (at
>     least) two places
> 
> But I'm having a distinct lack of success locating rants and diatribes
> or even well-reasoned articles supporting this opinion.
> 
> Am I out to lunch?
> 

No, but what better solution do we have to offer them?  There are dynamic
load distribution features and products (think Cisco PfR, for example), but
those are routinely lambasted as well.

- -- 
=========
bep

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