Some doubts on large scale BGP/AS design and black hole routing risk

Mon Apr 4 12:58:20 UTC 2016

On Sun, Apr 3, 2016 at 6:17 PM, Mark Tinka <mark.tinka at seacom.mu> wrote:

>
>
> On 31/Mar/16 10:12, magicboiz at hotmail.com wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > My questions are:
> >
> > 1. What could happen in the case of total failure in the redundant
> > leased lines? Black hole routing between POPs?
>
> If you have redundant backhaul that completely fails, you've got real
> problems.
>
> However, if that does happen, any traffic coming into each individual
> PoP destined for users in the other PoP will fail. Only traffic
> terminating for customers at that PoP will succeed.
>
>
so (as bill points out) plan to localize subnets to each pop. (do not
number customers in pop1 in the same /24 as customers in pop2)

>
> >
> > 2. What are the best design methods to avoid this scenario?
>
> Work on your backhaul.
>
> Originate specific routes that cover customers present in each PoP, with
> the aggregate as a backup route.
>
> You can run a tunnel across the Internet to simulate a backbone between
> both PoP's, using your side of your upstream's IP addresses as the
> tunnel end-point. Not elegant, but keeps you up.
>
>
be aware of gre / ip-in-ip forwarding limitations

> >
> >    2.1: adding a third POP creating a triangle? What if a POP looses
> > connection with the other two POPs at the same time? Another black hole?
>
> Your fixation on a complete backhaul outage is interesting.
>
> Purchase backhaul from different service providers to increase your
> chances of uptime.
>
>
>
different providers, different entrance facilities in the building(s),
different conduits out of the area... and hope that somewhere along the
path providerA and B didn't share conduit or capacity-swap you to a single
path :)

> >
> >    2.2: requesting another prefix and allocating 1:1 prefix:POP, so in
> > the scenario each POP only would announce its prefix to the upstreams?
>
> See above re: originating more specific routes based on the customers
> you have at each PoP.
>
>
> >
> >    2.3: other?
>
> Work harder on your backhaul.
>
> Yes, bad things can happen, and they do happen. But more than likely, if
> a 3-PoP network loses all connectivity from each other, I think routing
> will be a much smaller problem to solve in the grand scheme of things.
>
> Mark.
>
>