carrier comparison

Fri Feb 7 03:47:29 UTC 2014

Based on your description, it sounds like the outage did not bring your BGP session down, as such you were connected and advertising to the broken Service Provider.

e.g. Cogent typically does multi-hop bgp, as such if there a network outage past the BGP router, you will experience the situation you described.

You might have to deploy some other means of (script ?) to bring your BGP session down from the 'broken' Service Provider.

To the best of my knowledge, BGP does not have any mechanism to determine broken connectivity upstream past the router you are BGP session is up with.

Faisal Imtiaz
Snappy Internet & Telecom
7266 SW 48 Street
Miami, FL 33155
Tel: 305 663 5518 x 232

Help-desk: (305)663-5518 Option 2 or Email: Support at Snappytelecom.net 

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Vlade Ristevski" <vristevs at ramapo.edu>
> Cc: nanog at nanog.org
> Sent: Thursday, February 6, 2014 5:25:53 PM
> Subject: Re: carrier comparison
> 
> B)  We have our own AS and IP space. I advertise them to both Cogent and
> our other ISP. I use the local preference attribute to share the load
> for incoming traffic between both ISPs. In the last 5 outages over the
> last few years, this has happened twice. I'm waiting on the RFO so I can
> further investigate why this happened. I think someone mentioned this in
> a post a few months ago too.
> 
> It sucks for us, because we're a small school and don't have someone in
> a NOC to monitor our networks 24x7. I literally had to get out of bed
> and disable our BGP session with them for us to get through the outage.
> I was getting around 90% packet loss from my home to our router.
> 
> 
> On 2/6/2014 4:57 PM, Eric Flanery (eric) wrote:
> > Vlade,
> >
> > When you say that "they still advertise your routes", do you mean:
> >
> > A: That you were having them originate your routes, and they failed to
> > stop doing so when they had problems? Or...
> >
> > B: That routes you were originating continued to be propagated by
> > them, even though your session with them was down? Or...
> >
> > C: Something else.
> >
> > I ask, as we are considering some cheap Cogent bandwidth in the
> > not-too-distant future, to allow us to keep commit rates low on higher
> > quality connections. 'A' wouldn't be a real problem, since we run our
> > own AS and originate our own routes; 'B' could be potentially devastating.
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Feb 6, 2014 at 8:04 AM, Vlade Ristevski <vristevs at ramapo.edu
> > <mailto:vristevs at ramapo.edu>> wrote:
> >
> >     We have had Cogent over Verizon's Fiber for more than a few years
> >     now. Cogent goes down once at year at minimum. They had 2 outages
> >     in a single day a couple days ago in Northern NJ.  One in the AM
> >     "..caused by a power outage in a vendor data center where Cogent
> >     is collocated." They went on to have another outage at around 9:30
> >     PM on the same day for which I'm still waiting for an RFO. During
> >     this outage, they still were advertising our BGP routes so we
> >     didn't fail over to our 2nd provider. I notice that happens alot
> >     with them. When they go down, they still advertise your routes.
> >
> >     As far as price goes, for us Cogent is cheap but Lightpath is cheaper.
> >
> >     Our college is kind of far from things so we don't have a lot of
> >     outside fiber coming. The last mile fiber for both of our
> >     connections are different from our Internet providers. I've never
> >     had a big issue with the two working with each other. The only
> >     issue we had is I suspected we weren't getting as much bandwidth
> >     as we paid for. They had to work out where the policer and/or
> >     bottle neck was. This is the only issue we had in 5 years with
> >     this set up and it got resolved. IME, when there is a full outage,
> >     it's always been clear who the responsible party is.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >     On 2/6/2014 10:17 AM, Adam Greene wrote:
> >
> >         Hi,
> >
> >
> >         We're a small ISP / datacenter with a Time Warner fiber-based
> >         DIA contract
> >         that is coming up for renewal.
> >
> >
> >         We're getting much better pricing offers from Cogent, and are
> >         finding out
> >         what Level 3 can do for us as well. Both providers will use
> >         Time Warner
> >         fiber for last mile.
> >
> >
> >         My questions are:
> >
> >         -          Will we be sacrificing quality if we spring for Cogent?
> >         (yesterday's Cogent/Verizon thread provided some cold chills
> >         for my spine)
> >
> >         -          Is there a risk with contracting a carrier that
> >         utilizes another
> >         carrier (such as Time Warner) for the last mile? (i.e. if
> >         there is a
> >         downtime situation, are we going to be caught in a web of
> >         confusion and
> >         finger-pointing that delays problem resolution)?
> >
> >         -          How are peoples' experiences with L3 vs TWC?
> >
> >
> >         Although I assume everyone on the list would be interested in
> >         what others
> >         have to say about these questions, out of respect for the
> >         carriers in
> >         question, I encourage you to email frank opinions off list.
> >
> >
> >         Or if there are third party tools or resources you know that I
> >         could consult
> >         to deduce the answers to these questions myself, they are most
> >         welcome.
> >
> >
> >         Thanks,
> >
> >         Adam
> >
> >
> >
> 
> --
> Vlad
> 
> 