NANOG, its decline in s/n

Derek Samford dsamford at fastduck.net
Thu Aug 8 16:48:21 UTC 2002


Personally, every time I post, it's from a Tier-2 perspective. This,
honestly, changes absolutely nothing about how I build my network from a
logical perspective. There are some minor differences, I.E. I don't own
my own fiber, and I don't have many peering relationships. I use
transit/transport the same as many other Tier-2's. But the best
practices of a Tier-1 are the best practices of any other ISP
regardless. Reinventing the wheel is, IMHO, a very bad thing. Over 90%
of networking mistakes have already been made, and really, that's what
NANOG is for. How many of you out there wish you had done some things
different when you look back after rolling out a network? I think people
should keep in mind that one of the hardest parts of network design
isn't making it work, but making it scale properly. And generally,
that's the advice the newer people tend to ignore. Sure other ways will
*work*, but they generally won't scale. And the whole point of an ISP is
to grow, right?

Derek

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-nanog at merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog at merit.edu] On Behalf Of
Andy Dills
Sent: Thursday, August 08, 2002 12:07 PM
To: Rob Healey
Cc: nanog at merit.edu
Subject: Re: NANOG, its decline in s/n


On Thu, 8 Aug 2002, Rob Healey wrote:

>       I've noticed that alot of the advise given is appropriate for
>       larger, i.e. tier 1, setups but isn't necessarily as useful
>       for tier 2/3/N+1.
>
>       Things that work great in large scale might be unweildy or not
>       even feasable on a smaller scale and vice-versa.
...
> 	To avoid confusion in the future it might be helpful for both
> 	questioner's and answerers to mention what scale their
addressing
> 	in the question/answer.

I'm not so sure about that. It's kind of like the old adage... "if you
have to ask how much it costs, it's too expensive for you."

I love reading the peering papers from William Norton...but I also
recognize that for my network, transit is always going to be more
economical.

IMO, it's pretty evident when advice applies to large networks and when
it
applies to small networks. How many small networks do you know of that,
for example, verify routes announced by peers with the IRR? Few if any,
because they don't have any peers big enough for that to be the
solution.
You simply use ACLs.

Besides, small networks have small problems. There aren't many
unanswerable questions pertaining to the best practice for operating a
small network...but a big network? Different story.

Andy

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