Faster 'Net growth rate raises fears about routers

Tue Apr 3 20:21:13 UTC 2001

On Tue, 3 Apr 2001, Sheldon Dubrowin wrote:
> I think the suggestion was to get multihomed to the same ISP.  You can still
> get redundant links to the same ISP and you won't be adding BGP entries on
> the Core Routers.  The benefit to this in a BGP world is that the ISP will
> deal with which link to use, perhaps to different POPs.

The problem is that currently ISPs are a lot less reliable than telcos or
hardware. You tend to get an upstream provider having a problem ( lasting
say a minute or more ) once every week or so while Telco or Hardware
problems will occur every year or so. One of the numbers is 50 times
bigger than the other.

As for using different pops it doesn't always work. We have 2 US pops
currently. One has 2 links to different pops of the same provider while
the other has 2 links to that provider and a backup link to another.

Last night the main providers entire California network when to hell for
about 2 hours. One pop was almostly completely offline while the other was
mostly working for the entire time.

With the currently level of reliability, redundancy of providers *is*
pretty much required.

-- 
Simon Lyall.                |  Newsmaster  | Work: simon.lyall at ihug.co.nz
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