Who uses RADB? [was BGP to doom us all]

Mon Mar 3 02:08:39 UTC 2003

On Sunday, Mar 2, 2003, at 14:06 America/Vancouver, alex at yuriev.com 
wrote:

>>>> It doesnt cost a million dollars to have access to a RR, its 
>>>> somewhat
>>>> less! You pay for your domains you pay for your IPs you pay for your
>>>> ASN you pay for your SSL, so why be shocked you pay a little for 
>>>> this
>>>> too? And if everyone filters your prefixes that will be operational
>>>> value enough to join!
>>>
>>> Because it provides me *no* service what so ever.
>>
>> Then don't use it. Surely this is not rocket science.
>
> If it provides no service to me and the guy next block and another 
> little
> ISP that is announcing some prefixes and a few large ISPs that announce
> quite a few prefixes you wont get the data that you need. I am sure 
> you get
> the idea.

Some people seem to have the idea that RADB-like services are only 
useful if every operator uses them, and every operator publishes 
accurate information. In my experience, that is not the case.

The most common usefulness I have experienced out of the IRR is as an 
automated mechanism for publishing policy to adjoining ASes. Examples 
are BGP-speaking customers instructing their providers on how to filter 
their advertisements, and ASes filtering advertisements from their 
peers (which does happen, even if it's not common in the US). Whether 
or not non-adjoining ASes use the IRR at all, or use it well, is not 
relevant to this application.

Generating route filters from the IRR via a small lump of script has 
the potential to be cheaper, quicker, more efficient and less 
customer-enraging than the common alternative approach of opening six 
different tickets with the NOC and sacrificing small animals for three 
weeks until the updates are made.

Joe