The Attitude (was: the Internet Backbone)

Sun Apr 14 17:50:30 UTC 1996

Bill,

	A short answer to your refusal to peer objection in SPRINT's
policies  in the form of a question. Which is better:

1. peering with everyone at an exchange, including those ISPs who are
clearly clueless, and whose cluelessness leads to operational problems,
i.e. injection of bogus routes, black holes, routing loops, routing
flaps, and BGP peer transitions?

2. qualifying each of your peers as being clueful, prior to peering
with them, such that you (and your customers!) don't suffer from the
cluelessness of others?

Perhaps the easy way out is to suggest that educating the ISPs as to
what constitutes good behavior at an exchange (routing system stability
and reliable packet delivery) is the responsibility of the exchange
operators, and it might even be possible to enforce some interesting
policies in that regard in the route servers (e.g. if you have more
than N routing or BGP peer transitions per time period, the route
server will refuse to peer with you for 48 hours - think of it as the
hold-down or damper from Hell).

I certainly think that to the extent that the exchange operators can
measure such things as routing and peer stability, it is in everyone's
interest to see the numbers (except those ISPs who are unstable). Who
knows? A series good reports from exchange operators about an ISP might
lead to offers of private peering arrangements outside of the exchange,
to the benefit of the ISP. Similar to the way that having a good credit
record seems to lead to endless offers of more credit.

Lucky me, I'm just a customer, and don't have to worry about such
issues, except as they affect my ISPs. Of course, I do expect my ISPs
to deliver on the goods I'm paying them for: routing system stability
and reliable delivery of packets...

	Erik E. Fair	apple!fair	fair at apple.com