Customer AS

Mon Aug 19 20:26:33 UTC 1996

On Mon, 19 Aug 1996, Vadim Antonov wrote:

> Whoever arguing _for_ mulihoming for everyone forgets that
> taking more routing information in has dangers not present
> when you don't do routing yourself.

Many end-users use the term "multi-homing" as a synonym for "redundant
connectivity". In other words there are ways to satisfy such a customer's
needs without having then run BGP or even having them visible in the
routing tables of the core mesh. However, if an ISP does not inquire into
the customer's needs but merely assumes that they want to run BGP and be
globally visible then you are right, they expose the customer to the
dangers of global routing needlessly.

> I never saw any customer who had the ability to configure a
> multihomed site properly on their own; and most of the bogus
> routing information comes from multihomed customer sites.
> 
> It is _much_ better to multihome to the same provider who then
> can take care of messy global routing.

Exactly! And we should promote those tier 2 providers like IXA, Netaxs,
TLG and others who can provide this kind of service. 

Michael Dillon                   -               ISP & Internet Consulting
Memra Software Inc.              -                  Fax: +1-604-546-3049
http://www.memra.com             -               E-mail: michael at memra.com