Test Route

Mon Jan 30 23:36:48 UTC 1995

> Let me play Devil's Advocate here for a moment...

What no horns? No cloven hooves?  No pointy tail?

> Why do you need a -policy-?

Easy, My policy is to not propogate any customer routes unless they
are properly registered in the routing registry.  But how do I check 
that I have a "working" BGP peer up unless I can actually exchange a
route?  Here the testroute comes in real handy.

> Why do you need anything other than what 1597 already says?

See above. And besides, 192.0.2.0 is not part of RFC 1597.

> 1597 was VERY careful to be general and leave implementation of policy
> up to the users.  The RA, NAPs, IXs, and others do not need to concern
> themselves with how or when these suggestions are implemented.

Yup.

> The thing to understand is that the 1597 network addresses are not unique
> throughout the entire Internet.  There use and administration is done on a
> local basis,  but it behoves us to not get parochial about the term local.

Yup

> Actually, there's a really interesting point here that's about to give
> you a big whopping ulcer.  I hate to do this to you but...

Not a problem

> You, as RA, need to support your customer's routing policies.

Darn!  I was in it for the praise and adoration

> If, for instance, someone at Sprint and someone at MCI get together and
> decide jointly that they want to share network 10 "privately" for their
> BGP loopbacks or their porno FTP servers, they could form the Sprint/MCI
> net-10 consortium and you'd need to carry an advertisement for net 10 in
> your RA database so the two sites could exchange routes.
> 
> Here's where the fun comes in... now say Alternet and PSI get together and
> want to share network 10 "privately" for their BGP loopbacks or their
> porno FTP sites and form the Alternet/PSI net-10 consortium...
>
You forgot the guys who register their net10 with a policy of "don't route
per RFC 1597.

I don't think this is a problem in the RADB.  We can take this offline 
to reduce my public exposure.   

> The long and the short of it is that as RA, not only do you need to not
> block 1597 advertisements in your database,  you need to correctly implement
> virtual private networking for 1597 advertisements.

Yup again.

> Remember Bill, that the RA needs to not get bogged down by parochial
> definitions of "local."

Only when it pertains directly to the RA maintained route servers.

> I bet now you're wishing you hadn't brought this up and got me thinking...
> Sorry...I'll buy you a drink in Danvers to make it up to you.

Nope, this is really good.               
See you in Danvers... :)

--bill