Why doesn't BGP...

Sat Nov 9 14:43:09 UTC 1996

On Fri, 8 Nov 1996 18:39:09 -0800 (PST) 
 Ed Morin <edm at halcyon.com> alleged:

> We peer, using BGP, with several "backbone" provider networks for transit
> purposes.  Some of these links are "faster" than others (e.g. T-3 vs.
> multiple T-1 and single T-1) for various reasons.  If our router sees
> a route to a particular destination via a "high-speed" link and a "low-
> speed" link that has the _same_ number of AS "hops", it picks the link
> with the "lowest" IP address!  (At least that's what I'm told and what
> I observe...)

This is correct.

> 
> Why doesn't BGP pick the link with the highest bandwidth, or, better
> yet, pick the link with the highest bandwidth AND least congestion to
> label as the "best" available route?  The needed information is avail-
> able in the router (and if it was somebody doing BGP from a host that
> was separate from the box with the interfaces, well, then too bad I
> guess) and can't be _that_ hard to incorporate can it?
> 
It shouldn't be a factor in BGP. BGP is used to manage route announcements
and not the engineering short comings of your network, if you plan
things and configure BGP correctly you'll find you can do what you
are asking here.

Regards,
Neil.
--  
Neil J. McRae. Alive and Kicking.          E A S Y N E T  G R O U P  P L C 
neil at EASYNET.NET        NetBSD/sparc: 100% SpF (Solaris protection Factor) 
  Free the daemon in your <A HREF="http://www.NetBSD.ORG/">computer!</A>