Sprint's filtering

Thu Oct 8 20:11:44 UTC 1998

At 12:52 PM 10/8/98 -0700, Sean M. Doran wrote:
>Patrick Gilmore wrote:
>
>| Sean and Sprint still act publicly as if they are guardians of the route
>| table and without their wisdom and restraint, the rest of us would all die
>
>On the contrary, Sean has always maintained that the filtering
>was put in place to protect Sprint's customers from growth -- long-term
>or instant -- in the global routing system.

Hrmmm....  I am absolutely positive that you have mentioned to me in the
past that Sprint's filters are one of the few things keeping the routing
table to a manageable level.  I guess you meant that as an incidental side
effect and I misconstrued it as one of your primary intentions.  My apologies.

>The filters are an intelligent self-defence against misconfiguration,
>whether diffuse (across many ISPs) or localized (e.g. UUNET's
de-aggregation).

Perhaps you could clear something else up for me.  I was under the
impression that Sprint (and/or you) instituted the filters specifically
because your routers at the time could not handle the load.  Because that
is no longer the case - or at least it does not have to be the case, there
are routers out there that can handle the load quite well - perhaps the
filters should be relaxed a bit?  You can still maintain a "defense
mechanism" and allow deaggregation longer than /19.

This is not meant as an attack, I'm just wondering if such should be
considered.

>Is there any particular reason why you keep banging on this drum this way?
>I don't understand why you are so frequently so thoroughly UNPLEASANT
>in your tone whenever you return to the issue, and I don't understand
>why you return to the issue with such frequency.   Perhaps you might
>pause to reflect on that before people write you off entirely as a wingnut,
>and miss the occasional useful point you make (e.g., why isn't everyone
>filtering?) and the occasional useful response made in reply (e.g., 
>Sprint is not the only network filtering at the /19 level across newer
>address space).

Sean, from you, calling my e-mails "unpleasant" is almost a compliment. :)

But you are correct, I am probably a bit too religious on the issue and I
am sorry if I've hurt anyone's feelings.  I will publicly state again that
Sprint, EBone and every other network in the world may do exactly as they
please with their own network.  It is not now nor was it before my
intention to make Sprint stop filtering by claiming the moral high ground.

However, I also state again that I believe turnabout is fair play.  (At
least I can't see a reason not to do it in this case.)  So, why don't
Sprint's peers filter Sprint exactly as Sprint filters them?  Even Sprint
claims this is a good idea, and you yourself have told me it would probably
be good for the Internet.  (Of course, you thought every provider should
filter *all* of their peers in this manner.)  No flames, no unpleasantness,
no attempt to start an argument, just a simple question.

Would even one Sprint peer care to explain why they do not filter Sprint?

I hope that was not unpleasant for anyone. :P

>	Sean.

TTFN,
patrick

I Am Not An Isp
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