Routescience?

Sean Finn seanf at routescience.com
Mon Aug 20 23:02:56 UTC 2001


Irwin, 

  thanks for noticing, and thinking about, our recent
press release. Some quick points to the questions you
have raised:


The RouteScience PathControl product which was announced 
today 

 - supports active and/or passive measurements

 - is designed to optimize the egress routing decisions of
   multihomed enterprise customers. The performance routes
   are intended for the enterprise "EdgeRouters", and are
   not intended for propagation to upstream service provider
   routes. 

   (We see a world of difference between the kinds of BGP 
   changes appropriate in a "leaf node" AS, versus those
   AS's which provide transit.) 

We're definitely interested in comments and suggestions. :)

cheers -- Sean



Irwin Lazar wrote:
> 
> Is anyone out there familiar with a company called "routescience"?  I caught
> the below press release at and wanted to find out if anyone can relay any
> real-world experiences with their system?  It almost sounds like they are
> using something like a Keynote Systems performance monitoring tool to inject
> BGP path preference information.
> 
> TIA,
> Irwin
> 
> ---
> ROUTESCIENCE DEVELOPS PLATFORM TO CONTROL BGP INTERNET ROUTING
> RouteScience, a start-up based in San Mateo, California, unveiled
> plans for a unique "route controller" platform for optimizing a
> company's multiple ISP links by providing real-time performance
> measurements of paths across the Internet to end users.  Using
> these performance metrics and customer preferences for ISP link
> cost, RouteScience's PathControl platform determines the best ISP
> path for end-users and can then automatically update the
> organization's edge routers with the best path routing
> information.  The route performance measurement relies on a
> patent-pending closed-feedback loop system that does not use
> pings.  Route updates are provided to the edge routers using
> standard Border Gateway Protocol.  A large company with multiple
> ISPs would use the systems to route traffic to the ISP links that
> actually deliver the best end-to-end performance.  The solution
> could also be used by a Tier-2/3 service provider to route
> traffic to multiple backbone carriers depending on cost and real-
> time performance metrics.  The company said default BGP chooses a
> sub-optimal route 50% - 80% of the time, depending on the number
> of alternative ISP paths.  Of those routes that can be improved,
> an alternate ISP is on average 2 times faster.  RouteScience
> claims its system provides deep visibility into ISP performance
> and could fundamentally change network service agreements and
> pricing by moving control over Internet routing decisions to the
> network edge.  http://www.routescience.com
> RouteScience, August 20, 2001



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