selective auto-aggregation

Fri Apr 18 13:36:01 UTC 2003

{Historical lessons of atomic aggregates and the dangers of passing them
along should be background}

On Thu, Apr 17, 2003 at 05:04:06PM -0500, Jack Bates wrote:
[snip]
> companies requiring the longer prefixes. Are there companies that 
> actually announce their smaller routes despite controlling the shorter 
> prefix? 

Yes.

> What would be the benefit of doing so?

They mistakenly believe that all providers will proagate their
more-specifics and want to attranct traffic in a certain way for 
a certain longest-match. If they 
- anticipate this link-juggling to ONLY occur along contracted 
  paths
- appropriately tag NO-EXPORT
- also announce the greater aggregate
...then they'll get what they want out of the parties with whom
they contract.  It is trivial and stunning that service providers 
don't actively promote it to their customers. Some would rather 
collect money for customers grazing on the commons rather than
for providing *service*.

-- 
             RSUC / GweepNet / Spunk / FnB / Usenix / SAGE