multi-homing fixed

Tue Aug 28 16:05:15 UTC 2001

Having just had my DSL go down yet AGAIN (a more or less daily 
occurrence), I'm inclined to chip in under my telecommuter hat.  Yes, 
I know the best way is to convince my boss to pay for frac T1/frame 
access with dial backup. Working on that.

In the meantime, I have DSL from CAIS, with Covad as the CLEC. Covad 
is in Chapter 11. I've also ordered @home cable to come in for next 
week, and I'm trying to scrounge a multiple-Ethernet router to set up 
alternate connectivity. (Note that I work for a router vendor, so I 
can't go and do something as simple as mail-order a router). @home 
doesn't seem to be in much better financial shape.

At 4:28 PM +0100 8/28/01, Alex Bligh wrote:
>>The real problem with most basement multi-homers is they go with the
>>cheapest local service they can get, often from someone clueless with one
>>POP / one path.  To fix this, they add another cheap, local, clueless
>>service and pray they don't get clueless at the same time.  Then they
>>inflict bad judgement on the rest of the Internet by demanding their
>>routes be distributed.  Bad plan.
>
>I do not think anyone (Randy included) is questioning the right of
>basement-dwellers to multihome (by my previous definition). I think
>what is being questioned by many and various is
>(a) their right to do it at other people's expense, without
>    reimbursement
>(b) whether the (non-reimbursed) cost to the community is
>    greater than the (non-paid for) gain to the community.
>(c) whether there are other technologies which cost less
>    in total, and/or attribute cost more directly to those
>    who benefit from it.
>(d) whether in an effort to achieve multihoming, they are
>    selecting the technology which costs them the least, or
>    costs the community the least.

What I'd like to see, as a short-term fix, is to have two local 
providers each agree to have a multihomed block within their 
allocations, and both to propagate this block to the DFZ and each 
other. Microallocations would come out of it; the microallocations 
would not be advertised between the two carriers. Certainly, there 
would be failure modes in which the microallocation might go down for 
one provider, but I'd be in better shape. I'd ideally pick local 
carriers with different kinds of physical connectivity.

While I'm perfectly capable of running BGP with both carriers, I 
recognize that skill would be rare in the basement market, and I 
can't reasonably expect it.  But I am getting truly sick of dial 
backup on a per-host basis.

*thank you -- this may have been more venting steam than anything else **

>
>Whilst there is no current mechanism to reliably achieve
>(a) (beyond Roeland kindly offering to pay for Sean's
>routers), direct market forces fail, so, like with so many
>other problems, the internet community has come up with
>hueristic mechanisms to enforce (b) i.e. 'your reachability
>information is only worth the cost of my carrying it
>if it contains announcements shorter than a /nn, and I
>will rely on RIR's to demonstrate that there is a fair
>correlation between assigment size (and thus prefix
>length) and usefulness of the prefix to me.
>
>If all this sounds a bit "matter of opinion", type stuff,
>which will never get resolved, well, yes it is, and thus
>just the right sort of stuff for a flamewar on NANOG.
>
>Great, just so long as elsewhere, people are thinking about
>(c). And then we can have the adoption flamewar (d) on NANOG
>afterwards.
>
>--
>Alex Bligh
>Personal Capacity