Is it normal for your provider to withhold BGP peering info until the night of the cut?

Fri Jan 22 19:20:09 UTC 2016

Oh, we don't. Typically when we turn up a new circuit, the old is left in place for 2 weeks in case we need to roll back. This is simply a matter of them giving us their peering info ahead of time so that we can prestage the configs. Someone else responded that there are probably two teams involved on the carrier's side (and I'm guessing some automated systems?) which may explain some of this, but I can't understand why they couldn't just punch in the info earlier than the night of the change. These guys are not a small carrier.
Anyways, it's just an inconvenience and it struck me as odd, so I thought I'd ask if this is normal or not. Thanks for the feedback everyone.

> Subject: Re: Is it normal for your provider to withhold BGP peering info until the night of the cut?
> From: dcorbe at hammerfiber.com
> Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2016 18:35:05 -0500
> CC: bz_siege_01 at hotmail.com; nanog at nanog.org
> To: ianm at fairwaymc.com
> 
> > We have 4 full-peering providers between two data centers. Our accounting people did some shopping and found that there was a competitor who came in substantially lower this year and leadership decided to swap our most expensive circuit to the new carrier. 
> > (I don't know what etiquette is, so I won't name the carrier... but it's a well-known name) Anyways, we were preparing for the circuit cutover and asked for the BGP peering info up front like we normally do. This carrier said that they don't provide this until the night of the cut. Now, we've done this 5 or 6 times over the years with all of our other carriers and this is the first one to ever do this. We even escalated to our account manager and they still won't provide it.
> > I know it's not a huge deal, but life is so much easier when you can prestage your cut and rollback commands. In fact, our internal Change Management process mandates peer review all proposed config changes and now we have to explain why some lines say TBD!
> > Is this a common SOP nowadays? Anyone care to explain why they wouldn't just provide it ahead of time?
> > Thanks in advance.
> > CWB 		 	   		  
> > 
> 
> My question to the OP would be why didn’t you schedule the turndown of the old circuit to overlap with the turnup of the new circuit?  That way you could perform your cut independently of turn-up testing with your new provider.  Why is it that you MUST perform both activities on the same night?  You can always turn up a circuit, make sure it works and then turn it back down on your end until you’re actually ready to use it.  
> 
> 